Thread by @davidevelasqu

We hear it often: "Kaiser spends $50M on housing," "United HC donates $3M to food security..." so we asked, how much are private insurers REALLY spending on #SDOH?

Our work in @JournalGIM attempts to answer this Q -- you may or may not be surprised.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

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After identifying social spending for the top 20 US health insurers by market share (66%+ of the total market), we found that:

1. 💰 Bw 2017-2021, social spending was at least $1.87 billion

2. 🏩 The top 6 insurers made up nearly 3/4 of that spending

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3. 🏡 Most funds ($1.2B) went to housing and food security ($238M) programs

4. 🚗 The fewest funds ($13.4M) went to transportation

You may be wondering -- did Covid-19 impact spending? It certainly appears so.

Funding for nearly all SDOH categories spiked in 2020...

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But many private insurers had record profits, so we looked at social spending as a percent of net income before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a % of net income, the top 6 insurers, on average, spent 0.11% of dollars on SDOH in 2017, 1.6% in 2020, and 0.67% in 2021 📈

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So it looks like private health insurers are spending substantial dollars on social programs, but that spending constitutes a small share of their profits.

How much should they be spending on these efforts?

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Well, that's a Q that requires much more deliberation, esp since the impact of these programs is often unclear and social spending dollars may be used to reduce insurance premiums and cost-sharing.

Re-attaching the link if you want to dive deeper: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

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