U.S. consumers may have no idea how much retirees really spend on health care costs not covered by Medicare.
Analysts at Voya Financial raise that possibility in a summary of results from a recent telephone survey of 1,003 U.S. adults ages 18 and older.
Another financial services firm, Fidelity Investments, produces a well-publicized series of annual estimates of what a 65-year-old couple retiring during the estimate year can expect to spend on hospital care, outpatient services, physician services, prescription drugs, and related products and services over the course of retirement.
Fidelity estimated in August that the typical couple retiring in 2016 would need about $260,000 to cover post-retirement out-of-pocket health care costs, or about $130,000 per person. The estimate includes only acute health care expenses, not long-term care costs.
Only 19% of the Voya survey participants said they thought they would spend more than $100,000 on post-retirement health care costs, and 31% said they expected to spend $25,000 or less.
