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What is stopping insurance companies from doing that now? If you're paying for insurance, it's in your insurance company's best interest to pay low prices.
by SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
What is stopping insurance companies from doing that now? If you're paying for insurance, it's in your insurance company's best interest to pay low prices.
- Arubis 8y agoThey can and do, at which point the hospital or other billing party directly bills the beneficiary of care or their guardian, which is how folks that think they're financially secure end up bankrupt.
- dv_dt 8y agoBecause insurance companies are fighting at both ends. If their payments are too low, their network providers will stop taking that insurance plan or company and then they lose customers for lack of network reach. Also, well-intentioned overhead limit regulations to spend at least 80% of funds on care, creates a countervailing accounting pressure to increase costs so that administrative spending can be higher - flowing more money to the insurance company. I actually agree w/ overhead limits, but you also need other efficiency metrics to keep the anti-optimization in check. Or, personally I think we should go to some form of universal healthcare and wipe out private health insurance as it's currently constituted.
- tosz25 8y agoA recent episode of An Arm and a Leg podcast explains this pretty well (https://armandalegshow.com/why-health-insurance-actually-sucks/ https://armandalegshow.com/why-health-insurance-actually-suc...). In many areas of the US, health networks are effectively local/regional monopolies and can pick and choose which insurance providers they accept. So there is effectively a "single seller" system for services that are in high demand.