4 ms·

Aetna is surprisingly forward-thinking for a bunch of evil bastards.

• lionhearted 16y ago
  > Aetna is surprisingly forward-thinking for a bunch of evil bastards. I know it's fashionable to bash health insurers, but I think it's not quite accurate. Aetna's profit margins are lower than 4% [1] and they generally do well for people. Insurance is the kind of business that is almost always disliked, because people attribute the positive success stories and gratitude towards the people doing the direct work (the doctors), but everything that goes wrong to the insurer. It's just the nature of things. I'll share a counter-story though: When I was 13 years old, I had a kind of benign skin cancer growth on my head and we had Aetna at the time. If memory serves, the policy for our entire family was only $500 per month, and pretty much every dime that we'd ever paid was more than wiped out by me getting surgery. The insurance process was fairly smooth and there were no problems. For $6000 per year to insure a whole family against disaster, I think that's a pretty awesome service. Their margins are low. Currently I've got Patriot International insurance while traveling, $150 for six months for coverage up to $2,000,000 with a $10,000 deductible. Honestly, though it's unfashionable to say, I think the health insurance companies are generally a massive net win for society. [1] http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why-health-insurers-make-lousy-villains.html http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why...