What that tells you is that the cost of treating that 10% of the elderly is $320 billion, while the healthier 90% of the elderly--roughly 40 billion people--only cost $160 billion a year to care for.
Now, given that the rest of the population under 65--about 255 million people--need on average far less care than the 90% of seniors who are in that lower-cost group, extending care to them all would clearly cost less than $1 trillion.
Together that amounts to a rather questionable assumption. Sure younger people tend to require less care than older people, but everyone up to 65 costing less than everyone over 65 after you take out the sickest, amounting to two thirds of the cost, from the over 65 range? Maybe, but I think Lindorff tosses that out there with insufficient support. It could easily be very wrong.
Then he's factoring in eliminating VA costs, when costs for those currently covered by the VA might not be so low. You probably have a higher, perhaps much higher, percentage of disabled among non-senior citizens in the VA system than you do amount non-senior citizens outside the system.
Then he adds in savings from uncompensated care, ignoring the fact that your still likely to have uncompensated care, particularly from illegal aliens, and probably not just from them. |
