b' US President #14 Just How GREEDY Is MyHealth Insurance Company? Franklin PierceI can express no better hope for my country than that To add perspective to healthcare spendingGRAPH 3 the kind Providence in the U.S., I would like to take a look atwhich smiled upon(48) data from the National Institute for Healthour fathers may en- PT:Care Management Foundation (NIHCM)able their children to1853-1857and the Agency for Healthcare Researchpreserve the blessings and Quality (AHRQ). This data identifiesthey have inherited .huge discrepancies between those who useSource: Franklin Pierce, Inauguralvery little of the health insurance premiumAddress, March 4, 1853.dollars and those who use extraordinary US President #15amounts. According to the NIHCM data,James Buchanannearly one-quarter of all money spent on Liberty, sir, is a healthcare is used by a mere one percentprecious gift, which (1%) of the population (see, Graph 2). Thecan never long be AHRQ data pegs this figure at a whoppingenjoyed to any people, $127,284/person per year (see, Graph 3).(65)without the most The top 10% of individuals are responsiblePT: 1857-1861 watchful jealousy . It for using two-thirds of all healthcare spendis Hesperian fruit, which the ever-($38,980/person per year), while the bottomwakeful jealousy of the people 50% only use 3% of healthcare spend at acan alone preserve .meager $385/person per year. There are many ways (short of aThe very possession of power has GRAPH 2 single-payer universal healthcarea stronga natural tendency, to system) to tackle the problem ofcorrupt the heart . If the govern-healthcare affordability in the U.S.ment has been administered (e.g., government regulation ofupon correct principles, an medical costs, aggressive manage- intelligent people will do justice ment of the medical care of theto their rulers; if not they will sickest Americans, subsidization ortake care that every abuse shall reinsurance of medical costs thatbe corrected .exceed a reasonable threshold, etc.),Source: James Buchanan,Congressional Debate on Retrenchment, but one thing is certain: unless andFebruary 4, 1828until we address this problem, health insurance will never appropriately US President #16reflect the actual risk of the over- Abraham Lincolnwhelming majority of the peopleThe peoplewho purchase it, and it will never the people be affordable to most Americans.are the rightful Moreover, as healthcare costs (andmasters of both the insurance premiums that trackcongresses, (52) them) rise at hyperinflationary lev- and courtsPT: 1861-1865According to PBS.org, there were an estimatedels, the U.S. health insurance marketnot to overthrow the331 million people living in the U.S. in 2020. Thiswill continue to struggle againstconstitution, but to overthrowmeans 3.3 million Americans were responsible forthe ever-present death spiral thatthe men who pervert it .$421 billion of healthcare spend, while the healthi- has been an obstacle to affordableSource: Abraham Lincoln, Notes for and manageable health insuranceSpeech in Kansas and Ohio (pp. 2),est 165 million people (50 times that population)premiums for decades, and meaning- September 16-17, 1859spent less than one-sixth of that figure! This is aful healthcare will continue to be out textbook case of the 80-20 rule, and it clearly il- reach for most people. If you have questions about lustrates the need to control the healthcare costs ofthis article or would like to these highest utilizers if we are ever going to makediscuss your companys health healthcare (and health insurance) affordable to theS insurance progam, feel free to rest of the population. contact me at(801) 263-8000or info@wmimutual.com. WPMA News / Spring 202123'