Medicare : issues in political economy / Ronald J. Vogel.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-247) and index.

A short analytical history of Medicare. Medicare benefits ; Medicare expenditures over time ; Budgeting the Medicare entitlement and payment to providers ; The burden of Medicare ; Did Medicare expenditures improve the health of the elderly? ; Recapitulation ; Appendix : the microeconomics of beneficiary and provider incentives -- Public choice models of government spending applied to the Medicare context. The Pauly model ; The Coughlin, Mueller, and Murrell (CMM) model of interest-group behavior within a representative democracy ; "Public" income as a motivator for elderly interest-group behavior within a representative democracy -- Elderly voting behavior. Preliminary considerations ; Voting participation and voting power ; Weighting votes by intensity of preference ; Voting power projections ; Recapitulation -- The American Association of Retired Persons and elderly politics. The logic of collective action ; History : enrollment and financial growth ; The dynamics of AARP political power ; Regression analysis testing implicit hypotheses in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 ; Some concluding thoughts on associations -- Reforming Medicare : can Medicare be reformed? The question of efficiency ; The question of equity ; Concluding thoughts.