From the
Squared Away Blog of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:
Are people who claim their Social Security retirement benefits when they’re 62 too sick or impaired to work? ...
[R]esearchers, from the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins
University, examined Medicare claims from 1991 through 2008 for the four
groups during the year following their 65th birthdays. They
found no evidence of persistent health problems that would have kept the
62-year-olds from continuing to work for a few more years. ...
Controlling for race, sex, education and other factors that have a bearing on health, the $287 annual difference in Medicare claims between people who started receiving retirement benefits at 62 and at 65 was not significant. Similarly, the healthcare spending of people who received disability benefits and those who were rejected was virtually the same.
But there was a large gap between the group who claimed a retirement benefit at 62 and the group on disability: Medicare claims for disability recipients were $4,400 more annually than the claims for early pensioners.
It’s important to note that this analysis doesn’t capture any
differences in healthcare spending that may’ve occurred prior to age 65.
Because of the methodology problem indicated in the last paragraph quoted above, I don't think we can call this study definitive.
4 comments:
I thought retirees only got Medicare when they reach full retirement age, so I wouldn't expect Medicare claims from a 62 year old, unless they were actually on disability. And no, I wouldn't be surprised if there are exceptions to the rule, but this seems like a case of researchers not really knowing how the system works. Am i missing something here?
They're referencing the 3 year old group that applied for retirement benefits at 62 and is now 65, thus rec'ving Medicare.
These results are hardly surprising. There are a variety of non-health reasons a person might choose to take early retirement. Also, you would not expect to find a high percentage of significant health problems among those who retire early, because SSA encourages early retirees to apply for DIB, pushing the eligible individuals into the DIB pool instead of the RIB pool.
Right, seems like it's no secret to the boomer crowd (and as just pointed out explicitly mentioned by SSA field employees) that if one alleged ailing health, he can apply for DIB in his early 60s, get a DIB amount that is likely significantly higher than his 62 or so RIB, and then stay on that until forced to switch over to RIB.
Granted, the DIB app process takes a lot longer than RIB, so maybe there's a significant number of folks who stopped working, needed income fast, and filed for RIB and received RIB, only to have contemporaneously or shortly thereafter applied for DIB. Lots more data needed before we can see what's actually going on here.
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