Catastrophic expenditures

I wrote this in the NY Times blog 'Room for Debate' last Thursday responding to the President's speech. A few people have sent me requests for more information on 'my plan.' It is an idea, not a plan per se. I have managed to get estimates of the percentage of persons under age 65 who have more than $10,000 in health expenditures in a given year. This data is as follows:

Percent of people with health expenditures greater than $10,000/Year
Age
0-19 2.2%
18-39 6.2%
40-49 8.7%
50-64 19.6%

The above numbers are very hard to come by....I spent most of Friday trying to find this and/or back of the envelope it. I found someone who has done it about as well as possible (and did so using multiple data sources/data sets). This has been adjusted to account for persons with 0 health expenditures in a give year, meaning such persons are included. The person who gave me this data did so on an 'off the record' basis so I am not able to identify them, but this is a reputable organization. Also, this is further evidence that if you could have one, and only one variable with which to risk adjust insurance premiums, you would pick age.