that have been distinguished by Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999), viz. the cost of morbidity and the cost of mortality … (their "red herring" hypothesis claims that neglecting the mortality component results in excessive estimates of future …

remaining life expectancy and lower mortality risk relative to earlier time periods due to improvements in mortality. We examine … to determine what eligibility ages would be today and in 2050 if adjustments for mortality improvement were taken into … approximately 0.15 years annually. Failure to adjust for mortality improvement implies the percent of the population eligible to …

that mortality rises with age and a large share of HCE is caused by proximity to death. This hypothesis has spurned a large …