By the summer of 1958, 43% of all persons 65 years of age and over, or 6,600,000 persons, had purchased voluntary health insurance to help pay for the costs of potential hospital, surgical, or medical care.1 With the extension of various programs of health insurance among persons 65 years of age and over, there is wide interest in reappraising how these programs are meeting the charges for hospital care. The purpose of this paper is to appraise current methods being used to ascertain the extent of the hospital costs of the aged covered by voluntary health insurance and to suggest alternative methods.
While there has been a great deal of discussion concerning the hospital payment "problems" of the aged, the extent of the payment of hospital bills by voluntary health insurance has received only slight treatment, due to the research problems involved. These available data, while useful as trends,