Can Medicare become an advocate for worker protection?

Medicare is under great pressure to restrain expenditures. If the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could be shown that a beneficiary's work history affects Medicare spending on that person once retired, Medicare might be engaged in efforts to improve worker protection. On this premise we organized a one day meeting with specialists from Medicare, Social Security Administration, National Center for Health Statistics, NIOSH, OSHA, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of the Census, Senate HELP subcommittee on Aging and Primary Care, and a few academic researchers. The objective was to explore ways to link job history to Medicare expenditures on a beneficiary. Participants agreed on two next steps: 1) Test in a simple way whether work history does affect expenditures, by comparing employment in at least two industries expected to pose different workplace risks. 2) Create worker protection multi-agency data sharing agreement with a standing steering committee that establishes guidance for requests, so that the participating Federal agencies can bring individual requests to share data for studies on worker protection.