Of all a UHNWI’s assets, health will always be the most valuable. The day-to-day responsibilities of overseeing a business empire or complex wealth can often put this all-important asset at risk. While UHNWIs can make significant investments into health solutions, ensuring that any given solution is truly the best money can buy is often a challenge in itself.
01 The burden of responsibility
For UHNWIs, financial decisions often carry significant consequences. Unfortunately, high levels of stress typically accompany high levels of wealth. Heart disease, anxiety, and sleep disorders are all too common among UHNWIs.
Many UHNWIs are known to take relaxation seriously by carving out time for physical exercise and mindfulness practices from their busy schedules. For instance:
- Media mogul and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey advocates yoga and meditation as ways to manage the pressures of her high-profile life.
- Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter and co-founder of Block, is known for rising early to meditate, exercise, and drink a “wake me up” cocktail.”
02 The labyrinth of complex medical insurance
Among virtually all types of risks, medical ones are perhaps the most unpredictable and challenging to insure against. Unlike life expectancy, which can be statistically modelled, an individual’s specific medical future is highly unpredictable. Treatments may vary in success, and chronic conditions might require ongoing management. This uncertainty poses a challenge in predicting the complete scope of potential medical costs. This challenge is reflected in the increasing complexity (and rising premiums) of medical policies offered by insurance companies.
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UHNWIs can afford these premiums, but making claims often entails unnecessary administrative hassle when the full costs of care can be self-insured, that is to say covered out-of-pocket when necessary.
Famous UHNWIs have generally avoided disclosing their approaches to medical insurance, most likely due to the sensitive nature of personal medical information. Nevertheless, medical self-insurance is widely recognized among well-resourced enterprises – including those led by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Jamie Dimon – as a prudent financial decision.
For example, in 2018, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan, formed an alliance to take more responsibility for covering the medical costs of their respective workforces. The alliance disbanded in 2021 because it was unnecessary; the companies preferred taking more individualistic approaches tailored to their specific needs. In 2023, the Employee Benefit Research Institute reported that US companies have been self-insuring the medical risks of more than half of all the employees in the country since 2010. Also, it is worth noting that Warren Buffett is known to be a proponent of self-insurance in general.
03 When “best care” becomes a bewildering maze
Virtually all medical treatments are accessible to UHNWIs. However, this abundance of options can be overwhelming, leading to questions about the optimal course of action.
Prominent UHNWIs’ backing of cutting-edge healthcare initiatives suggest that data holds the key to answering these questions. For example:
- Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire biotechnology entrepreneur, is a major donor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. The Initiative aims to map all human cell types at a single-cell level with advanced data-driven techniques. The data will be used to identify new drug targets and personalise treatment strategies based on the compositions of individuals’ cells.
- Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has used his company’s venture capital arm, Salesforce Ventures, to invest in healthcare startups leveraging data for treatment recommendations. One notable example is Paige AI, which employs artificial intelligence to analyse medical images and identify potential cancer cases.
Mastering wealth data to reduce stress and streamline medical self-insurance decisions
For UHNWIs with complex wealth, having a comprehensive, clear, and current overview of their portfolios can go a long way towards ensuring psychological health and easing medical self-insurance decisions. Just as in cutting-edge medicine, good data availability and analytics are key to success.
