March 1st, 2012 – Of people under 65, the top 1% of people with private health insurance account for over 25% of health care costs, according to the New York Times and a study by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
When the major provisions of health reform take effect on January 1st, 2014 and health insurance companies are required to accept all customers regardless of pre-existing health conditions, health insurers will have to take on these costly patients, which is expected to increase health insurance rates for the rest of the population.
Here are some more eye-opening statistics: Just 5 percent of Americans accounted for 47.5 percent of all spending on health care in 2008. Half of the population spent only 3.1 percent of the money spent. Total spending on health care reached $2.6 trillion in 2010, which accounts for 17.9 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
