From an article on Forbes.com called “A Healthcare List [1]” (it is by no means complete or comprehensive and some of the data is dated; however, all of these statistics relate directly to any debate on healthcare reform):
- Medicare spends about $50B on the last 2 months [2] of a patient’s life
- Medicare/Medicaid fraud is estimated at $70B per year [3]
- 21% of Americans smoke [4] – The American Cancer Society claims that “tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the U.S….”
- Obesity Epidemic [5] – in 1985 there was no state that had an obesity rate greater than 10%. By 2010 there was no state with an obesity rate lower than 20% and 36 states have an obesity rate higher than 25%. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
- 23-30% of prescriptions [6] never get picked up at the pharmacy, from a Surescripts study on 40M prescriptions from 2008 to 2010
- 80% of healthcare bills [7] contain errors
- Insurance claim errors are estimated at about $17 Billion per year [8]
- The Milliman Medical Index [9] measures the total annual cost of healthcare for a typical family of 4 covered by a preferred provider plan (PPO). In 2002 it was $9,235. For 2011 it was $19,393.
- By 2025 the projected average annual cost [10] of family healthcare insurance will be approximately equal the average annual household income.
- The Census Bureau reported 49.9 Million uninsured [11] for 2010 (roughly 16.3% of the population and statistically unchanged from 2009)
With healthcare costs reaching almost 18% of GDP, healthcare reform should continue to be at the forefront of small business owners minds. If you have any questions regarding your healthcare costs, or would like to discuss some alternatives to the costs that you are currently paying for yourself or your employees, please give us a call [12].