How Big is $80 Billion? (bigger than you think!)
Insurance fraud steals $80 billion every year. That’s a lot of money… a lot of crime… and a plenty of harm to honest Americans everywhere.
But what does a number this big really mean?* Actually, quite a lot.
With $80 billion, you could pay…
- salaries of 2.2 million American workers for a year.
- all personal income taxes for 7.4 million Americans for a year.
- tuition for nearly 15.6 million students at America’s four-year public universities for a year.
- healthcare costs for nearly 2 of every three seniors aged 65 and over for a year.
- every CEO of America’s 500 largest companies for the next 16 years.
You could also…
- plant enough trees to reforest all of New England plus most of West Virginia.
- build 293,000 new homes.
- buy a new car for nearly 3 million licensed drivers. That’s enough for every driver in New Jersey or Georgia.
- send everyone in Florida, Colorado and South Dakota to the movies every day, for a whole year (popcorn and soda extra!). That’s 23 million people.
- buy coffee and a bagel (with cream cheese) for every adult in New York City (6 million people) each morning for 20 years.
- fund America’s entire space program for the next five years — or launch 62 space shuttle missions.
- build 69 stealth bombers.
As well as…
- send 6 million families of four to their local Major League Baseball home games for an entire season. They get tickets, caps, programs, sodas, beer and hotdogs — and parking. Mustard’s free!
- plant enough trees to reforest a logged-out area the size of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina — combined.
- pay for nearly half of all prescription drugs now brought by Americans each year.
- fund all cancer research in America for the next 13 years.
- buy enough oil to power every car, SUV and light truck for 7 1/2 months.
Other $80-billion fraud facts…
- Music lovers: You could buy 100 CDs a day for nearly 129,000 years before you run out of money. How long is that? About when the Neanderthal Man first appeared until now.
- Fraud, Inc.: If insurance crooks formed a company called Fraud, Inc., it would rank 17th among the Fortune 500 in yearly income (for 2004).
- Long walk: If you place 80 billion one-dollar bills end to end, they’ll stretch to the moon and back — about 16 times.
* As of June 2005. Also assumes multi-year figures stay about the same each year.