Risk Pooling: Redistribution and Fragmentation Explorer
Compare one shared health-financing pool with two separate pools. Change the population and expected healthcare costs to see how pooling redistributes financial risk without making the underlying costs disappear.
Build the population
Members with lower expected annual healthcare costs.
Members with higher expected annual healthcare costs.
What the arrangement means
Total members
Total expected claims
Shared average per member
Expected claims cost per member
Lower-need group
One shared pool
How to interpret this explorer
This is a simplified teaching model of expected claims, not an insurance-pricing calculator. It isolates redistribution so that the effect of combining populations is visible.
- The shared average is total expected claims divided by all members.
- A shared average does not mean every member contributes the same amount; real systems may use taxes, income-related contributions, subsidies or risk-rated premiums.
- Separate pools do not remove redistribution within each group, but they limit redistribution between the two groups.
- Administration, reserves, provider payment, utilisation changes, uncertainty and benefit design are intentionally excluded.
- The example does not imply that higher-need members are responsible for their health status or should receive less coverage.