Around 1.3 million elderly Americans are currently in nursing homes (around half are age 85 and older).

In 2007, more than 25% of community-resident Medicare beneficiaries over age 65 had difficulty in performing one or more activities of daily living.  An additional 4.6% reported difficulties with instrumental activities of daily living. 

Of institutionalized Medicare beneficiaries, 83% had difficulties with one or more ADL and 67% had difficulty with three or more ADLs. 

Of the 65+ Americans who reported a severe disability in 2009, 64% reported their health as fair or poor.  Among those who reported no disability, only 10% reported their health as fair or poor.

In 2009, 37% of older Americans reported some type of disability (i.e. difficulty in hearing, vision, cognition, ambulation, self-care, or independent living).  56% of people over 80 reported a severe disability and 29% reported that they needed assistance. 

In 2009, 93.5% of non-institutionalized Americans age 65+ were covered by Medicare.  Of those, around 58% had some type of supplemental private health insurance.  8% had military-based health insurance, and 9% were covered by Medicaid. 

In 2009, older Americans had average out-of-pocket health care expenditures of $4,846--an increase of 61% since 1999.  The average for Americans of all ages was $3,126.  Older Americans also spent 12.9% of their total expenditures on health--more than twice that spent by all health care consumers. 

In 2007, older Americans averaged 7.1 office visits with doctors--compared to 3.7 for Americans ages 45-65.

The averages length of hospital stay for Americans age 65+ in 2007 was 5.6 days--compared to 4.8 days for Americans of all ages.

In 2007, around 12.9 million Americans ages 65+ were discharged from short stay hospitals--a rate three times the comparable rate for persons of all ages.