Healthy Life Expectancy for Medicare Managed Care Elderly

This presentation examines a population health measure, health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE), for the elderly Medicare managed care population. We used the healthy days measure from the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey 2003 Cohort 6 to calculate the healthy and unhealthy life expectancy of the Medicare managed care population 65 years of age and older using the 2003 annual life tables from the National Center of Health Statistics. The proportion of days in a healthy state was used to adjust the years of life remaining to arrive at the HALE, or the number of years left in a healthy state. HALE was calculated for the total population as well as racial and gender subgroups. Overall, the Medicare managed care beneficiaries who turned 65 years old were expected to live an additional 18.4 years, of which 13.6 years were healthy. The differences in healthy life expectancy were statistically significant between males and females across all age groups except those 90 years or older. Whites had a higher life expectancy and healthy life expectancy than African Americans. Healthy life expectancy at age 65 was 13.7 for Whites and 11.8 for African Americans. The average number of years spent in an unhealthy state was 4.8 for Whites and 5.2 for African Americans. The differences between White males and African American males were larger at younger age groups than at an older age. African American males had the lowest life expectancy (14.9 years) and the lowest healthy life expectancy (10.6 years), compared to all other subgroups.