Government and Social Insurance

Government and Social Insurance

Federal and state governments run a number of insurance programs. Some of the programs look much like private insurance, in the sense that the members of a group makes steady payments into a fund, and those in the group who suffer an adverse experience receive payments. Other programs protect against risk, but without an explicit fund being set up. Following are some examples.

• Unemployment insurance: Employers in every state pay a small amount for unemployment insurance, which goes into a fund that is used to pay benefits to workers for a period of time, usually six months, after they lose their jobs.
• Pension insurance: Employers that offer pensions to their retired employees are required by law to pay a small fraction of what they are setting aside for pensions to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which is used to pay at least some pension benefits to workers if a company goes bankrupt and cannot pay the pensions it has promised.
• Deposit insurance: Banks are required by law to pay a small fraction of their deposits to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which goes into a fund that is used to pay depositors the value of their bank deposits up to $250,000 (the amount was raised from $100,000 to $250,000 in 2008) if the bank should go bankrupt.
• Workman’s compensation insurance: Employers are required by law to pay a small percentage of the salaries that they pay into funds, typically run at the state level, that are used to pay benefits to workers who suffer an injury on the job.
• Retirement insurance: All workers pay a percentage of their income into Social Security and into Medicare, which then provides income and health care benefits to the elderly. Social Security and Medicare are not literally “insurance” in the sense that those currently contributing to the fund are not eligible for benefits. They function like insurance, however, in the sense that regular payments are made into the programs today in exchange for benefits to be received in the case of a later event—either becoming old or becoming sick when old. Such programs are sometimes called “social insurance.”

The major additional costs to insurance companies, other than the payment of claims, are the costs of running a business: the administrative costs of hiring workers, administering accounts, and processing insurance claims. For most insurance companies, the insurance premiums coming in and the claims payments going out are much larger than the amounts earned by investing money or the administrative costs.

Thus, while factors like investment income earned on reserves, administrative costs, and groups with different risks complicate the overall picture, a fundamental law of insurance must hold true: The average person’s payments into insurance over time must cover 1) the average person’s claims, 2) the costs of running the company, and 3) leave room for the firm’s profits. This law can be boiled down to the idea that average premiums and average insurance payouts must be approximately equal.