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.