EBRI Reports On Prefunding Retiree Medical Expenses

By Staff Writer

March 02, 2003 at 07:00 PM

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EBRI Reports On Prefunding Retiree Medical Expenses

Some retirees might need to be millionaires to prefund medical costs, according to researchers at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, Washington.

EBRI came to that conclusion by considering the case of a 65-year-old retiree without employment-based health benefits. If the retiree lives to age 100 and medical inflation averages 14% per year, the retiree will need about $1.5 million to prefund lifetime out-of-pocket medical expenses, EBRI researchers estimate.

If the same retiree has employment-based insurance that covers prescription drug costs, the prefunding level might be about $500,000, but only 27% of U.S. residents over age 65 have employment-based benefits, EBRI says.

The estimates do not include the cost of long-term care, EBRI notes.

But EBRI also points out that prefunding needs might be much less if medical inflation rates turn out to be lower than feared. A man who retired at 65 and died at 80 in a world where medical inflation averaged only 7% would need only $47,000 to prefund lifetime medical expenses with employment-based insurance and $116,000 to prefund lifetime medical expenses without employer-based benefits.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 3, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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