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Medicare: Coverage, Evolution, and Challenges

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Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging
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Synonyms

Healthcare; Health insurance; Medicaid; Medical care; Universal healthcare coverage

Definition

Medicare is a federal government health insurance program in the United States. It is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It provides nearly universal coverage among the population aged 65 years or older and for younger population with disabilities or suffering end-stage renal disease.

Overview

Life expectancy has significantly increased in the last decades in most countries, especially in developed economies. In the United States, expectancy of life at birth has increased from 69.9 years in year 1960 to 78.6 years in 2016 (OECD 2019a), while life expectancy at the age of 65 has increased in the same period from 15.8 (for women) and 12.8 (for men) to 20.6 (for women) and 18 (for men) (OECD 2019b). Although this is excellent news “even if in other countries this increase has...

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Correspondence to Manuel García-Goñi .

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© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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García-Goñi, M. (2019). Medicare: Coverage, Evolution, and Challenges. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_994-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_994-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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