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How far does this carry? Is the charge of the insurance company to keep you alive at all costs?
by brodouevencode 2y ago
How far does this carry? Is the charge of the insurance company to keep you alive at all costs?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y agoIn a healthy society we wouldn't have "health insurance companies" which are profit driven and are motivated to cut costs, not provide care.
- brodouevencode 2y agoThere's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone will have to bear a cost somewhere along the way.
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y agoI would prefer to live in a society that puts the well-being of its people over fretting whether someone is getting a "free lunch" or worrying "how will we make money off of this?" The US is so backwards, we spend so much money on healthcare for the worst impacts in the world, and we pump billions into our military blowing up people abroad. A healthy society would spend that money into taking care of its people, and that includes providing healthcare for everyone no matter the cost.
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y agoI meant to say "worst outcomes" here
- nancyminusone 2y agoWhy bring the military into it at all? The US government already spends more ON HEALTHCARE than everyone else and still can't seem to figure it out.
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y agoI bring the military budget up just as an example of how the priorities of our society, or our government rather, are completely backwards imo. One reason why we haven't "figured it out" is because health insurance companies effectively lobby the US govt to secure their monopoly. They know that we just got rid of the middle man that is insurance companies, we'd spend less money and get better care.
- goatlover 2y agoPart of that military spending has been protecting Europe from Russia and South Korea, Taiwan and Japan from China and North Korea.
- techdmn 2y agoI am happy to bear the cost of providing care. I am NOT happy to bear the cost of the huge profits generated by the U.S. healthcare system. Insurance companies are increasing profits by denying care. A separate issue is consolidation. In my area, what used to be locally owned clinics and hospitals are being bought up by national conglomerates. Their first move is often to reduce staffing and cut costs, driving up delays and driving down quality of care.
- SteveNuts 2y agoFor-profit health insurance is the ultimate rent-seeking industry. They provide a net-negative to their customers, scraping profit off the transaction between a patient and their care provider.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> There's no such thing as a free lunch. OK, but American "lunch" costs 2-3x what it does everywhere else, with similar/worse outcomes. (And yes, that's counting taxes.) We're ordering oatmeal and being charged wagyu filet prices. I, at this moment, have a syringe with a mililiter of fluid on my desk that's worth more than both of my cars combined. https://imgur.com/a/HzqgLa2 https://imgur.com/a/HzqgLa2 It's about 1/10th that in the UK.
- PaulHoule 2y agoReally? My son hurt his knee on the job, workman's comp paid for him to get an MRI and a pretty detailed workup from the orthopedist, a brace that the orthopedist told him not to wear, etc. The advice in the end was "rest" and "return to activities gradually". My insurance pays for a colonoscopy every 5-10 years, telehealth therapy appointments with no copay, free vaccinations, really a lot of stuff.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> My insurance pays for a colonoscopy every 5-10 years, telehealth therapy appointments with no copay, free vaccinations, really a lot of stuff. No, you pay for those. Via your premiums. (Which your employer may pay a significant part of. That's ultimately lost salary to you; it isn't out of charity on their part either.) My family health insurance costs $3k/month. Going up ~10% next month, too.
- PaulHoule 2y agoI'm not going to disagree that its expensive but I'm not going to say that it is low quantity or low quality. If the US does worse on population health statistics than other countries do it is not the fault of our healthcare system but rather the fault of social determinants of health such as social disconnection, inequality, etc.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> I'm not going to say that it is low quantity or low quality. That's OK, we have stats for that. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024 https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2... > If the US does worse on population health statistics than other countries do it is not the fault of our healthcare system but rather the fault of social determinants of health such as social disconnection, inequality, etc. Other countries have these things, too.
- lenerdenator 2y agoNo one suggested there was a free lunch. Actually, I take that back. If we think of a "free lunch" as something that isn't earned, the only free lunch here is the one that shareholders (which includes the c-suite given their share grants in the compensation packages) receive quarterly in the form of dividends and earnings-per-share. When you take someone's money (usually $200/month or more... much more actually), find every single excuse to not provide a service a doctor of medicine has declared to be necessary, and then pay yourself more money than most people would even know how to spend in a lifetime, you're pretending you're entitled to a free lunch.
- miah_ 2y agoThe Health Insurance for my wife, two children, and myself is _$1500_/mo and that's _with_ a $20,000 deductible. When I started working ~25 years ago, my health insurance was typically fully covered by my employer and I had no deductible that I was aware of. The cost of insurance has only gotten worse, and finding a plan without a outrageous deductible adds to that. As a society, this is something we can totally solve. So many other countries have socialized healthcare. Its not an impossible goal.
- hypeatei 2y ago> There's no such thing as a free lunch This is a take that lacks any nuance and it doesn't even pertain to what anyone said. Typical for conservatives. No one is saying we need to provide healthcare for literally $0 and pretend it has no costs. No, most realize our current cobbled together system with middlemen everywhere isn't working and it's costing lives. Why we can't have a single payer system that gets rid of the paperwork and makes it easier to bargain against prices is beyond me. Sure, let's keep this system where you have to worry about in/out network hospitals, jump through a bunch of hoops to get treatment, and middlemen causing prices to surge. Madness.
- equality_1138 2y agoEver done any work for a US health insurance company? You won't find many conservatives. You will find many "free lunch" advocates who spend half their day lobbying to protect their job and their industry. They are playing politics with your healthcare costs. How is that for nuance?
- hypeatei 2y agoIt's great and even more reason to get rid of these useless corporations. The conservative thing to me was the basic take "ummm actually it's not free" which lacks any actual thought. It doesn't further the discussion and perpetuates the suffering all to... own the libs? I'm not sure.
- equality_1138 2y agoThe "libs" who lobbied for so-called universal healthcare? They further empowered these corporations and now they want to get rid of them. The libs owned themselves on this topic, obviously.
- ceejayoz 2y agoThe ACA was substantially watered down to get (conservative!) Lieberman's deciding vote in the Senate. "The libs", as always, were told they'd have to wait later for their stuff.
- pmx 2y agoI pay national insurance every month, its automatically taken from my salary. Most of the time it pays for other people's care - and that's absolutely fine with me. And if at some point I need care, I know it will be there for me and how much money I have won't come into it, the costs of my care won't be weighed against the value of my life, i'll just get the care I need. It doesn't need to be so expensive, the US has just built such an incredibly inefficient system ( or efficient if you accept it is designed to generate outrageous profit from the suffering of humans).
- forinti 2y agoEverybody is born, everybody gets sick, everybody eventually dies. It is sensible to have a universal health care system: everyone pays for it and everybody will use it.
- uoaei 2y agoOne of the rhetorical devices I despise the most is what I'll call "stranger in a strange land fallacy", the idea that we should re-litigate the most basic questions at the most basic level over and over and over because people think they're the main character on the debate channel on TV.
- ConcernedCoder 2y agothis is the correct answer, as long as health care is for-profit we will always be the product instead of the consumer
- gruez 2y agoI think most people would say that Switzerland is a "healthy society", yet: >Switzerland has universal health care,[3] regulated by the Swiss Federal Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland (within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland
- tzs 2y agoThey operate as non-profits when providing that insurance, so I'm not sure how well that works as a counterexample to his assertion. The do also offer supplemental insurance for things beyond what the compulsory insurance covers and those supplemental plans are for-profit.
- lenerdenator 2y agoAt the very least, it's the charge of the insurance company to serve the customer in a way that passes on savings to the customer in the form of lower premiums or increased amounts of care. It's insulting to a person's intelligence to tell them "we just don't have the money to cover the surgery recommended by doctors to solve your debilitating injury or illness" and then turn around and give your c-suite seven-figure compensation packages every year while also instituting a dividend for the free riders known as shareholders.
- lvspiff 2y agoIn an ideal world the insurance company would operate more like a fiduciary than a custodian. Their job should be to guide you towards the best possible outcome not just the outcome that suits their best interest. But, that would require everyone along the chain from physicians, pharmacies, nurses, back office, front office, billing and scheduling to all operate in that same manner -- which unfortunately doesn't lead to profit so we end up with the system we have.
- brodouevencode 2y agoI agree, but demonizing the profit motive isn't the ideal path. The system, as far as I can tell, needs work. The fiduciary model works in other places, it will probably work in insurance and healthcare as well.
- PaulHoule 2y agoIn fact as someone who pays the premiums I might feel better off when somebody else gets declined because it keeps my premiums down. At some point declines are a protection against quackery.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoUHC has a profit margin of 6%. If the company was PERFECTLY run, you're still going to have tons of people getting denied claims. That's what happens with the law of big numbers. And guess what. You're never going to have a perfectly run company. If you take the CEOs salary and distribute it to healthcare patients, $50M worth of healthcare is not going to even minutely move the needle. UHC revenue is $100B PER QUARTER. The CEO's pay is not even a rounding error on a rounding error. Was the CEO a perfect, honorable guy? No. Is taking his salary and spending it on patients going to do anything? In the large picture, also, no.
- avn2109 2y agoFWIW, 6% is clearly "Hollywood accounting," just look at the stock chart. No business with six percent margins has stock performance like UNH.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoHave you seen Carvana's stock?
- brodouevencode 2y agoIt just means that their costs have correlated with revenues, which is to be expected in certain industries. The better comparison would be with other insurance carriers.
- gruez 2y ago"Hollywood accounting" only works because you're transferring the profits of one enterprise (ie. the movie itself) to something else (ie. the production/distribution company). Unitedhealth Group is a publicly traded company. Where are they funneling the profits to?
- ceejayoz 2y agoSubsidiaries and affiliates. For example: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-sues-prescription-drug-middlemen-artificially-inflating-insulin-drug-prices https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/... > The FTC’s administrative complaint alleges that CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s ESI, and United Health Group’s Optum, and their respective GPOs—Zinc Health Services, Ascent Health Services, and Emisar Pharma Services—have abused their economic power by rigging pharmaceutical supply chain competition in their favor, forcing patients to pay more for life-saving medication. According to the complaint, these PBMs, known as the Big Three, together administer about 80% of all prescriptions in the United States.
- capybaraStorm 2y agoObligatory "I do not condone murder." The principle carries in so far as you hold up your contract for covered claims until bankrupt. Or to use an analogy, which HN absolutely hates and will nitpick since an analogy is never the same thing: you do not get to trespass someone from your airplane while you are in flight. If the airplane catastrophically fails and someone is sucked out, then there is a pass. It does not appear these denied claims are just people getting sucked out of a catastrophically failed aircraft.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoGiven insurance companies are not a necessary component of a functioning healthcare system why do we normalize debates around what level of resource extraction constitutes murder on their part?