Why is Health Insurance So Expensive?
There are always going to be affordable health insurance plans. However, health insurance is costly, and it does feel like the costs are rising year after year. Is there a reason why they are rising? Are elderly people to blame, or maybe families? In truth, there are two factors that are powering the rise in health insurance costs, and this article exposes them both.
Are Elderly People The Reason for High Health Insurance Prices?
You may be forgiven for thinking that health insurance costs are so high because of the elderly population. If numbers continue the way they are, then by the year 2050, the people over the age of 60 will have risen from 12% in 2015 to 22%. If it were not for the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of people aged 60 years or older would outnumber children of five years old or younger. In other words, there are a lot of elderly people and there are set to be more and more as people live longer and longer.
Yet, despite the fact that older people are more likely to claim on their health insurance, the fact is that older people are the reason why your health insurance is so low. They have been paying it for years, most probably without claiming, and the insurance companies they paid into have built value and stock to the point where they can take risks by offering lower prices. The fact that many health insurance companies offer a discount to older people is also evidence that people are staying healthier for longer as they age.
Are Families The Reason for High Health Insurance Prices?
The cost of having a child is expensive, what with the pregnancy, the birth, postnatal care and so forth. Plus, babies’ healthcare can be very expensive what with everything from a turn in the eye to a turn in the leg. Plus, as your children age, they break legs, get Scarlet Fever, need allergy medication, and so forth. You may be claiming quite a few times on your health insurance if you have a child, but people with families are not the reason for high health insurance costs. In fact, if you go online and look up family health insurance prices, you will see they are very reasonable, and they are reasonable because families are not big claimers.
The cost of treating childhood issues is often very low. In most cases, hospital care is the most expensive, followed by physician services. There are a few cases where children become ill, but for the most part, children spend very little time in hospital. In many cases, the claims you make on your insurance are for expected occurrences, like checkups, immunizations, and so forth, all of what are anticipated by your health insurance provider when they give you your quote.
Why Are Health Insurance Costs Rising?
The real reason why health insurance costs are rising is because of both the ever-increasing rise in population, and the increase in chronic illnesses. Diabetes is the most expensive to treat, costing health insurance companies a massive $64.4 billion per year. Here are some other costs to consider:
- Low-back and neck pain: $57.2 billion
- High blood pressure: $46.6 billion
- High cholesterol: $41.9 billion
- Depression: $30.8 billion
- Urinary disease: $30.2 billion
- Osteoarthritis: $29.9 billion
- Bloodstream infection: $26 billion
- Falls: $26 billion
- Oral disease: $25.3 billion
The fact is that health insurance is too easy to get, which is why medical companies are raising the prices of their medication so severely. The medication to treat diabetes costs $44.4 billion of the $64.4 billion used to treat people with diabetes. We can blame the medical companies for gouging people on drugs, but the fact is that the money is there in the health insurance company’s pockets, and the medical companies would be fools not to grab it.
What’s more, there is a seemingly undocumented plague of pain medication being used to get high, and things like lower back pain and neck pain are very difficult to verify. In most cases, you can walk into a doctor’s office, say you have one of those pains, and walk away with some very fun drugs that you can take yourself or sell on for a massive profit. This, along with the proliferation of sitting down at work, may be the reason for such high costs when it comes to neck and back pain. Plus, smartphones are now getting the blame for the rise in people complaining of neck pain.
The Cost of Health Insurance Will Always be Affordable
There are genuine academics who think that the cost of healthcare will one day reach the levels where people cannot afford it, and employers will abandon health insurance plans so that only people with a good income will ever have health insurance. Such a notion shows how dumb some people can be, even people with several degrees.
The market works on supply and demand. Healthcare and drugs may cost a lot of money, but that is because insurance companies are willing to pay inflated prices when required. Before people and businesses even start to abandon health insurance plans, the market will move to accommodate. No matter what the state of the economy is, you will always be able to find a health insurance policy you can afford, unless you have a chronic or life-altering ailment that requires frequent attention.