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I sort of doubt that. In practice, it seems to incentivize influencing policy to drive up healthcare costs, with little regard for patient outcomes.
by thesmallestcat 9y ago
I sort of doubt that. In practice, it seems to incentivize influencing policy to drive up healthcare costs, with little regard for patient outcomes.
- ssambros 9y agoWhy would insurance companies want to pay higher healthcare costs?
- rapind 9y agoIf healthcare was cheap then no one would need insurance?
- unicornporn 9y agoTaking care people and difficult medical conditions will likely never be dirt cheap, right? Unless you're envisioning Dark Mirror style robot care and cure everything pills.
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoHow do you figure such a thing? Do you have evidence?
- bmelton 9y agoThere's a crop of startups now that are incentivizing healthier lifestyles by gamifying healthy activities, routine doctor visits, etc. Insurance companies pay them per head to make their software available to customers, and reward customers with the most health points with lower premiums and such. Insurance companies, by and large, make their money on the delta between the prices they charge and the costs to deliver service. If they can delivery service to a predominately healthier population, then they can deliver service for lower costs, meaning they can lower costs to be more competitive, while being able to make more profits and deliver better outcomes. The notion that they want to drive up healthcare costs is kind of ridiculous. If that were true, they'd be rushing to sign up patients with terminal illnesses and costly pre-existing conditions, but the fact of the matter is that the government had to literally force them to for that to happen.