4 ms·

UHC does not provide care, they are a leach on society, as all health insurances companies are.

hollerith 2y ago
That's right. UHC has never done one good thing.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
If UNH was approving all their claims, then people would complain about increased premiums/deductibles. People just want to complain about not being able to afford something they want (American healthcare). While UNH does some shameful things, even criminal things, the celebration of a public execution of a second in command guy is embarrassing for HN.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  This rather ignores the role of health "insurers", third party administrators, repricing specialists and every other middle man that contributes more significantly to the price of healthcare than the actual cost of providing that care.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    In the US healthcare chain, the ranking of profit margins goes (and this is public info from public financials): Pharmaceutical companies 20%+ Healthcare software companies (based on other software company margins). 20%+ Healthcare providers (doctor groups) Hospitals (HCA, tenet, etc) 10%+ Managed care organizations (MCOs, health insurers), retail pharmacies, and medicine distributors at the very bottom. ~2% Legal is also up there. Those millions and tens of millions of dollar judgments don’t come from thin air. Go ahead and get rid of MCOs, and at best you will reduce costs by 5%. Their medical loss ratios are 85% to 90%. They are just allocating the very limited resources among more and more demand. Someone is going to have to be the bad guy unless supply of healthcare is drastically increased and tort reform happens to bring down liability costs.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      > They are just allocating the very limited resources among more and more demand. Are you saying that the same populations are getting more and more sick and ill? Citation needed for that. Or are they costing more and more money? And if so, why? Wouldn't be health insurers setting up middlemen of their own (PBS, etc.) to get around legal caps on their own profit margins, would it? > Legal is also up there. Those millions and tens of millions of dollar judgments don’t come from thin air. Malpractice payouts are by and large a boogey man. Texas has had them capped for years and shockingly, malpractice insurance costs are effectively identical to what they were before. As an aside, malpractice insurance in itself isn't typically as onerous as people believe it to be. What is onerous, and what that industry does differently to most other insurance segments is "tail insurance". Tail insurance is the concept that major malpractice suits may appear well after your claims-made liability policy has ended. In most cases it's actually DOUBLE the premium you're paying for malpractice insurance, implying the insurer believes that your coverage is less than one-third of the claims they expect to pay. What -should- happen is that you carry "claims-made and prior acts" coverage. The challenge there is that in many cases your employer will cover claims-made as part of your compensation or part of their insurance, but don't elect prior acts coverage (and because of the way they do it, I suspect it's not as simple as "let me pay the difference"). But in general capping malpractice payouts has done nothing to offset malpractice coverage costs, let alone flow-through to end consumer costs.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        > Are you saying that the same populations are getting more and more sick and ill? Citation needed for that. Or are they costing more and more money? And if so, why? The citation is the population pyramid flattening out and turning upside down eventually. That means more and more old (and hence sick) people, and fewer and fewer care providers (young people). Also, there are a lot more treatment option, and sick people being kept alive longer. > Wouldn't be health insurers setting up middlemen of their own (PBS, etc.) to get around legal caps on their own profit margins, would it? No, absent enormous fraud, all revenue and expense is reflected on a company’s 10-K. UNH/Elevance/Cigna/Humana/CVS/etc all have multiple lines of business (like most other large businesses), but the final profit margin figures are what they are including all lines of business. Thanks for the info on tail insurance, I didn’t know that.

That's right. UHC has never done one good thing.

If UNH was approving all their claims, then people would complain about increased premiums/deductibles. People just want to complain about not being able to afford something they want (American healthcare). While UNH does some shameful things, even criminal things, the celebration of a public execution of a second in command guy is embarrassing for HN.

FireBeyond 2y ago
This rather ignores the role of health "insurers", third party administrators, repricing specialists and every other middle man that contributes more significantly to the price of healthcare than the actual cost of providing that care.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  In the US healthcare chain, the ranking of profit margins goes (and this is public info from public financials): Pharmaceutical companies 20%+ Healthcare software companies (based on other software company margins). 20%+ Healthcare providers (doctor groups) Hospitals (HCA, tenet, etc) 10%+ Managed care organizations (MCOs, health insurers), retail pharmacies, and medicine distributors at the very bottom. ~2% Legal is also up there. Those millions and tens of millions of dollar judgments don’t come from thin air. Go ahead and get rid of MCOs, and at best you will reduce costs by 5%. Their medical loss ratios are 85% to 90%. They are just allocating the very limited resources among more and more demand. Someone is going to have to be the bad guy unless supply of healthcare is drastically increased and tort reform happens to bring down liability costs.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    > They are just allocating the very limited resources among more and more demand. Are you saying that the same populations are getting more and more sick and ill? Citation needed for that. Or are they costing more and more money? And if so, why? Wouldn't be health insurers setting up middlemen of their own (PBS, etc.) to get around legal caps on their own profit margins, would it? > Legal is also up there. Those millions and tens of millions of dollar judgments don’t come from thin air. Malpractice payouts are by and large a boogey man. Texas has had them capped for years and shockingly, malpractice insurance costs are effectively identical to what they were before. As an aside, malpractice insurance in itself isn't typically as onerous as people believe it to be. What is onerous, and what that industry does differently to most other insurance segments is "tail insurance". Tail insurance is the concept that major malpractice suits may appear well after your claims-made liability policy has ended. In most cases it's actually DOUBLE the premium you're paying for malpractice insurance, implying the insurer believes that your coverage is less than one-third of the claims they expect to pay. What -should- happen is that you carry "claims-made and prior acts" coverage. The challenge there is that in many cases your employer will cover claims-made as part of your compensation or part of their insurance, but don't elect prior acts coverage (and because of the way they do it, I suspect it's not as simple as "let me pay the difference"). But in general capping malpractice payouts has done nothing to offset malpractice coverage costs, let alone flow-through to end consumer costs.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > Are you saying that the same populations are getting more and more sick and ill? Citation needed for that. Or are they costing more and more money? And if so, why? The citation is the population pyramid flattening out and turning upside down eventually. That means more and more old (and hence sick) people, and fewer and fewer care providers (young people). Also, there are a lot more treatment option, and sick people being kept alive longer. > Wouldn't be health insurers setting up middlemen of their own (PBS, etc.) to get around legal caps on their own profit margins, would it? No, absent enormous fraud, all revenue and expense is reflected on a company’s 10-K. UNH/Elevance/Cigna/Humana/CVS/etc all have multiple lines of business (like most other large businesses), but the final profit margin figures are what they are including all lines of business. Thanks for the info on tail insurance, I didn’t know that.