ABSTRACT
For several decades old age benefits saw maintenance of previous gains and periodic improvement in scope. Political accommodations “spread the wealth to prosperous and poor aged, to health providers and other stakeholders, finessing legislative roadblocks and financing conflicts, but demographic and health economic trends suggest an end to this era. Medicare Catastrophic repeal epitomizes health policy stalemate, presaging a more conflictual era in the 1990s. Divergent economic interests among subgroups of elderly and inflationary economics of fee-for-service medicine are subtexts to the debate suggesting that future benefits expansion will be elusive and that lesser structural reforms in the health care system can be implemented.
