Durable Medical Equipment & Home Healthcare

Overview

Environmental Concerns Pose Difficult Challenges for Healthcare

The aging U.S. population will pose tremendous challenges for state and federal government planning. This results from larger amounts of people in retirement and fewer numbers of people in the overall workforce. Life expectancy increases as a result of new drugs, exercising, and better dieting has resulted in people living longer. Actuary estimates of those aged 65 will increase to 78 years of age by the year 2075. With people living longer, the medical system will be compressed for more funding as people in the active workforce decline. Even if there were no declines with active workforce participants, healthcare funds would still be severely depleted because there is no additional funding to offset the increased life expectancy. These factors infer that Federal government re-imbursement rates may be even lower in the future than they are today. And this represents significant risk to all healthcare companies including medical equipment and supply firms.