3 ms·
This isn't a question of denying someone service, this is a question of what form the service takes. I am certain your health care provider won't pay 1 million
by jjk166 6y ago
This isn't a question of denying someone service, this is a question of what form the service takes. I am certain your health care provider won't pay 1 million dollars for a different cast design that reduces the time you wear it by 1%, nor should it. In the scenario I'm describing, both options are medically adequate, one is just more convenient but also substantially more expensive. Insurance pays for what you need, but it is quite common to deny claims which are not medically necessary.
- chefkoch 6y agoIn the case of this cancer,the maintainance drug is around $1000 a pill so you get to that million pretty quickly.
- jjk166 6y agoOkay, so the insurance company would pay $10 Trillion for one person to receive the cure for that cancer then? Obviously there is a limit. The fact is that $1000 is not the cost of producing the pill, that is the amount they can charge for the pill while still getting people to pay for it. When there is no competition, and people would die without it, prices get very high very quickly. There is an extremely large barrier to entry for new medicines, and pharmaceutical companies are structured to recoup the massive development costs by charging large sums for inexpensive to produce goods that they have essentially a monopoly over. If it costs billions of dollars to develop a cure, that cure is going to have to be expensive, but a cure administered repeatedly can amortize those costs over many low-cost doses, while a one-time cure can't. Insurance companies are all about spreading costs over time - paying out large sums to large numbers of people all at once is a lot more problematic than smaller, predictable payouts over a longer period of time. It is in their best interest as well for you to manage the disease.
- gadf 6y agoThank you for this analysis I believe it's making my case more clear.