Article On The 50th Anniversary Of Medicare

Richard L. Kaplan (Professor of Law, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) recently published an article entitled, Reflections on Medicare at 50: breaking the chains of path dependency for a new era, 23 Elder L.J. 1-39 (2015). Provided below is an abstract of the article:

The 50th anniversary of the enactment of Medicare provides an occasion for serious evaluation of Medicare, a governmental program that is so pivotal to the retirement security of older Americans. Paying for health care in retirement has only increased in importance since 1965, yet the fundamental structure of Medicare is essentially unchanged from its origins, even after the enactment of comprehensive health care reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), in 2010. Evaluating Medicare is particularly timely as the Baby Boom generation migrates into this program.

This Article begins by explaining the evolution of Medicare over the past halfcentury in the context of how other health insurance options operate today. It then analyzes what the ACA did and did not change in Medicare and how those changes affect the program’s overall appeal to new beneficiaries. It then offers two major recommendations to bring Medicare’s offerings into greater alignment with the health care challenges and needs that older Americans face going forward.