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If there's $300B in annual costs due to health care expenditures and lost productivity which can be reduced with a $1/day drug, it seems like the medical insura
by shard 11y ago
If there's $300B in annual costs due to health care expenditures and lost productivity which can be reduced with a $1/day drug, it seems like the medical insurance industry should be very interested in such a drug. Is the medical insurance industry unable to carry out the research or pay a research lab to do the work? Or are there other reasons they don't do this kind of research?
- DougWebb 11y agoWhat makes you think the Medical Insurance Industry is interested in reducing medical costs? They benefit from higher costs. If medical costs were much lower, fewer people would need/want insurance. Premiums would have to be lowered, which means less cash coming into the insurance company, and claims would be fewer and/or smaller which means less cash flowing through the insurance company. Cashflow is where the insurance company makes its profit. The other profit center is captured premiums: money people pay in that they never get back out. The insurance company doesn't care how high your medical bills are or how much you wind up paying for them; the company only cares about reducing its share as much as possible. Lowering the overall cost doesn't alter the payment distribution, so the insurance company has no inventive to lower overall costs. If there was a pill you could take which would allow you to pay a larger proportion of your medical costs, without reducing your premiums, the insurance company would be all over it.