Medicare Enrollment

December 7, 2011 — The Editors

Medicare Enrollment stats

Today is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Today is also the final day of the Medicare annual election period. Only one of these topics lends itself to a market size post. Worth noting—and by way of tying these two things together a little—is the fact that anyone (now an American citizen) who was around on the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked, is now eligible for Medicare.

Today’s market size is the number of people enrolled in the Medicare health insurance system in the United States in 2010. The graphic provides data on enrollment from 1970 to 2010 and shows how this population relates to the total U.S. population over this period.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: 47.2 million
Source: “Table I.1 Medicare Enrollment Trends,” part of the statistical offerings on the federal government’s CMS web site here.
Original source: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Human Health and Services
Posted on November 7, 2011

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Derivatives

September 22, 2011 — The Editors

Congressional attempts to regulate the market for derivatives is bringing this market into the news again. Until the financial crash of 2008 the derivatives market was well below the radar of most people. As the financial crisis unfolded we learned how the market for derivatives had been taken over by financial speculators and financial institutions using them in… innovative ways, turning them into something quite different from what they had been for more than a century.

In a perfect world, derivatives—an agreement between two parties about an exchange in which the price of the item being exchanged is derived from the value of an underlying asset—are used, for example, by a manufacturer to lock in the otherwise widely fluctuating price on a commodity that it buys regularly. When used this way, derivatives are a sort of insurance against volatility, a so called hedge against risk. Things get more complicated when this sort of insurance is purchased by somebody that doesn’t actually own the insured asset and that is where we enter the world of speculation which has become a large part of the derivatives market during the last two decades.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2010
Market size: $600 Trillion
Source: Aaron M. Kessler, “Carmakers fear restrictions of Wall Street reform,” September 22, 2011, Detroit Free Press, page B1.
Posted on September 22, 2011

Posted in Banking, Gambling, Insurance. No Comments »

High-Deductible Health Insurance Plans

July 6, 2011 — The Editors

High-deductible health insurance plans have lower premiums than traditional coverage but the insured pays quite a bit more out-of-pocket before any coverage starts. If the deductibles in such plans are at least $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for families, the plans can be paired with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). HSAs allow employees to deposit pretax income to pay for medical expenses. In many cases, employers also contribute to their employees’ HSAs.

Today’s market size shows enrollment for high-deductible health insurance plans with health savings accounts as of January of that year. In 2011, this represented 7% of all health insurance enrollment for people younger than 65.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2008 and 2011
Market size: 6.1 million and 11.4 million respectively
Source: Tom Murphy, “More are Enrolling in High-Deductible Plans,” Lansing State Journal, June 19, 2011, p. 3E
Original Source: America’s Health Insurance Plans

Posted in Health Care, Insurance. 1 Comment »

Extended Warranties

June 13, 2011 — The Editors

An extended warranty is something offered to consumers by retailers either as a service the retailer offers or on behalf of the manufacturer. These extended warranties vary greatly in terms of what they cover and length of duration. Today’s market size is an estimate of the number of such warranties sold annually in the United States.

Geographic ref.: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: 250 million warranties annually
Source: Newman, Andrew Adams,”Old-Time Torture Tests Resurface on YouTube, and Tablets Take a Licking,” The New York Times, page B6, June 10, 2011, [Online] here.

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National Flood Insurance Program

May 20, 2011 — The Editors

With flood waters inundating so many in the Mississippi River Valley and with spillways being opened to try and midigate the damage further downstream, we turn today to the size of the United State’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The program was designed to provide a shared pool of resources that could help and reduce the high cost of disaster assistance resulting from flooding along the national waterways.

NFIP is not only an insurance program but a floodplain management and mapping program. Participation is NFIP is voluntary at the community level, with a couple of exceptions. One is for properties located in officially designated flood plains on which a mortgage is held. Banks require the purchase of flood insurance for such properties on which they hold the mortgage. Another exception to the voluntary nature of this program is the fact that those who receive financial assistance from the federal government following a Presidential declaration of disaster may then be required to purchase flood insurance through NFIP.

Today’s market size is the total amount paid in premiums to the NFIP in 1990 and 2010 as well as the number of policies in force in those years.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 1990 and 2010
Market size: $672.8 million from 2.48 million policies and $3,353.8 million on 5.65 million policies respectively
Source: “Statistics by Calendar Year,” data made available online here by FEMA.
Original Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Secutiry, Federal Emergency Management Agency

Posted in Insurance, National Infrastructure, Water. No Comments »

Pet Health Care Insurance

June 3, 2010 — The Editors

The leading supplier of pet health care in the United States is Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI). This company has been offering pet health insurance for more than twenty years and was joined about six years ago by a small number of new entrants into this market.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2007
Market size: $210 Million
Source: “Tupanion Executive Summary,” 2009, p. NA
Original Source: Packaged Facts and Tupanion company report

Posted in Health Care, Insurance, Market Size. No Comments »
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