The U.S. health insurance market

In the United States, the health system is a combination of public and private, for-profit, and non-profit insurers and healthcare providers. The government provides funding for the national healthcare programs and various other programs such as those for low-income-individuals or veterans. Private insurance remains the foremost type of coverage though, and is mainly provided by employers. Around two thirds of women in the United States were insured through an employer, either theirs or a family member’s. This proportion was relatively similar for men insured in the U.S. through an employer. In 2020, the value of private health insurance premiums written by U.S. insurance companies reached over 336 billion U.S. dollars, with the top five health insurance companies representing about a quarter of the total U.S. market share in the health insurance industry.

Medicaid & private insurers

Medicaid is a national public health insurance program for citizens or lawful permanent residents with limited income and resources. At the end of 2019, it was estimated that over 75 million Americans were enrolled in the Medicaid program. As of 2020, Medicaid spending was greatest in California and New York, but almost every state in the U.S. expended at least one billion dollars that year. The number of Americans with private health insurance began to fall in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the numbers have been rising slowly again since 2013. In the first half of 2020, around 62 percent of Americans had private health insurance. Private health insurers have benefitted from this increase in recent years, which can be seen in their revenues. For instance, Anthem - one of the largest private health insurers in the U.S. - saw its highest ever revenue in 2020.

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