I recently received a letter regarding my healthcare and the upcoming changes being planned. The first sentence includes the following sentence, “the impacts of inflation and costs incurred from high-cost claimants.”

high-cost claimants

high-cost claimants

high-cost claimants

Reading this letter today was insulting.

The language used—phrases like “high-cost claimants”—felt incredibly dehumanizing. It reduces real people and real medical conditions to accounting categories on a spreadsheet. People like me become the problem instead of victims of unfortunate circumstances.

And here’s the thing that really frustrates me: patients do not control the cost of the system.

Patients aren’t the ones who:

• set drug prices
• design insurance formularies
• create prior authorization hoops
• negotiate (or fail to negotiate) pharmaceutical pricing
• structure insurance pools

Yet the messaging often frames rising healthcare costs as if they are driven by the people who are sick.

That framing feels like blame is being shifted onto patients who are already fighting just to access the care they need.

Years ago, I had a conversation with someone regarding my insurance coverage after one of my specialty medications was removed from the formulary. During that call, the person casually mentioned how expensive it is to cover someone with my medical needs. When I pushed back, the backtracking was immediate and I was reassured that my condition would never be held against me and that they would fight to ensure I received coverage.

But hearing it said out loud sticks with you.

Because it taps into a fear many people with chronic illness quietly carry: Are we viewed as a liability?

I understand that insurance companies analyze claims and categorize costs. That’s how actuarial systems work. But the language matters. Terms like “high-cost claimants” or “high utilizers” may be financial classifications, but when you are the person behind that label, it feels like a judgment.

The reality is that the drivers of healthcare costs are complicated and systemic. Pharmaceutical pricing, hospital consolidation, administrative overhead, and the cost of specialty drugs all play a role. Patients are the end users of healthcare, not the people setting the prices.

What concerns me most is that messaging like this pits people against each other—suggesting that some patients are responsible for others losing coverage. The truth is that the structural problems in our healthcare system are far bigger than any individual patient.

No one chooses to be sick. And patients should never be made to feel like they are the reason the system is struggling.