{"id":4869,"date":"2011-12-04T09:47:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T15:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=4869"},"modified":"2011-12-04T09:49:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T15:49:12","slug":"the-healthy-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=4869","title":{"rendered":"The Healthy 1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some attention has been focused on a recent analysis<\/a> that health care costs are highly skewed. Apparently, 1% of patients accounts for a fifth of all healthcare costs. For half of us, our healthcare costs are only a few hundred bucks a year. For the top 1%, they exceed $100,000.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what the point of this is. The very idea of health insurance is to insure<\/i> against catastrophic illness. $100,000 is the cost of a moderate to bad health problem. That 1% is not a static group; people move in and out as they get sick or healthy. We don’t need government to tax us all to help people pay bills; that’s what insurance does<\/i>. The only impact his has on the healthcare debate is to either link mandated coverage with mandated purchase — i.e., prevent people from waiting until they’re sick to buy insurance. It could also argue for high-deductible plans that only cover disasters.<\/p>\n

Naturally, this is being used to argue for all kinds of other things. Preventative care is a big one. But as I’ve noted, preventative care does not save money<\/a> even if it saves lives. It’s also being used to argue for end-of-life planning, which I support but is unrelated to this.<\/p>\n

Really, I don’t know this stat has suddenly become so big. Healthcare doesn’t cost much until you need it. We knew that, didn’t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some attention has been focused on a recent analysis that health care costs are highly skewed. Apparently, 1% of patients accounts for a fifth of all healthcare costs. For half of us, our healthcare costs are only a few hundred bucks a year. For the top 1%, they exceed $100,000. I’m not sure what the … Continue reading The Healthy 1%<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-4869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-politics","tag-healthcare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-1gx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4869"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4872,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions\/4872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}