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> 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. I have a hard t

> 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. I have a hard time buying this. Really? You can't cover a few more cents of a few more claims if you reduce c-suite pay? I don't pay my premium to just see it go directly to the c-suite and some retirement fund's coffers. I pay it to cover healthcare costs and to keep from being financially ruined by a chance illness or injury. If the CEO is making a half-million a year and his company is coming to me telling me that there just isn't any money to cover my back injury surgery, they're negotiating in far better faith than if they're paying him ~5x the median lifetime earnings of the American male each year, every year. Good faith matters.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
> I have a hard time buying this. Really? You can't cover a few more cents of a few more claims if you reduce c-suite pay? A single Tylenol in a hospital costs $15. If you think a few cents is going to do anything, you are completely bamboozled. A few cents is nothing in healthcare.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  I work in healthcare technology. I'm well aware of what things cost. Maybe instead of paying for the c-suite's bonuses, they need to be paying someone to air the dirty laundry of the health system that's charging $15 for an acetaminophen. When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care. Hell, doing actual work to reduce the cost of care is expensive, and we can't possibly expect the retirement funds and major shareholders of America to pay for that.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    > When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care. It's almost as if it's not an easy problem to solve, or some other health insurance company would do it and put all the other ones out of business.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      It's not an easy problem to solve if you're not interested in solving the problem. And they're not. Like I said, the goal of for-profit health insurance companies is not to maximize economic benefits for customers; it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders. It's a lot easier to transfer value to shareholders by just denying the claim submitted by the customer for that pill than it is to actually (legally) beat the entity charging for the pill into permanent submission. So that's what they do.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        > it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders Except health insurance is regulated, and you can only maximize profits to a small degree (which is the only reason UHC's profit margin is 6% instead of 40%). This incentivizes health insurance companies to provide a good enough service that people want their insurance. Capturing a lot of the market is their ONLY way to make money. They literally don't have the option to ask, "how do we just take more of our customers money and stuff it in our pockets?" That's not really that terrible if the company is Apple and selling products that nobody NEEDS. It is terrible if you've only got a few choices and their selling something everyone needs - hence the regulation of profits. It's almost as if our country isn't run by complete idiots. Is it a perfect system? No. Is there an obvious, far superior system? Also, no.
        lenerdenator 2y ago
        Here's the chart. [0] Review it, then come back to us. [0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
        onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        It's almost as if healthcare spending isn't the only variable that matters - and it matters how fat and sedentary your population is, and how much you pay doctors and nurses. It's almost as if the world isn't so reductive complex issues can be reduced to cute little charts.
gruez 2y ago
>>$50M worth of healthcare is not going to even minutely move the needle. >I have a hard time buying this. Really? You can't cover a few more cents of a few more claims if you reduce c-suite pay? Nice job moving the goalposts from "moving the needle" to "a few more cents of a few more claims". UnitedHealth Group had 371.6 billion in revenue last year. $50 M means they can provide 0.01% more care to their customers. I think it's fair to describe that as "not going to even minutely move the needle".
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It moves the needle for the premium-paying customer. Either the numbers matter or they don't. Pick one.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 2y ago
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/move_the_needle#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/move_the_needle#English >1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree Emphasis mine.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      You think over years and a number of bills that cents wouldn't start adding up? It's 100% noticeable. If it weren't, then it wouldn't matter to people like the c-suite who are so focused on making money for themselves.
      - gruez 2y ago
        The numerator might so up but so will the denominator, so it effectively cancels each other out. More to the point, I feel like this argument is over relative vs absolute. It might be noticeable" to a single person, but given that we're talking about the healthcare system as a whole, it's fair to say that it's not "noticeable".

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

> I have a hard time buying this. Really? You can't cover a few more cents of a few more claims if you reduce c-suite pay? A single Tylenol in a hospital costs $15. If you think a few cents is going to do anything, you are completely bamboozled. A few cents is nothing in healthcare.

lenerdenator 2y ago
I work in healthcare technology. I'm well aware of what things cost. Maybe instead of paying for the c-suite's bonuses, they need to be paying someone to air the dirty laundry of the health system that's charging $15 for an acetaminophen. When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care. Hell, doing actual work to reduce the cost of care is expensive, and we can't possibly expect the retirement funds and major shareholders of America to pay for that.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  > When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care. It's almost as if it's not an easy problem to solve, or some other health insurance company would do it and put all the other ones out of business.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    It's not an easy problem to solve if you're not interested in solving the problem. And they're not. Like I said, the goal of for-profit health insurance companies is not to maximize economic benefits for customers; it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders. It's a lot easier to transfer value to shareholders by just denying the claim submitted by the customer for that pill than it is to actually (legally) beat the entity charging for the pill into permanent submission. So that's what they do.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      > it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders Except health insurance is regulated, and you can only maximize profits to a small degree (which is the only reason UHC's profit margin is 6% instead of 40%). This incentivizes health insurance companies to provide a good enough service that people want their insurance. Capturing a lot of the market is their ONLY way to make money. They literally don't have the option to ask, "how do we just take more of our customers money and stuff it in our pockets?" That's not really that terrible if the company is Apple and selling products that nobody NEEDS. It is terrible if you've only got a few choices and their selling something everyone needs - hence the regulation of profits. It's almost as if our country isn't run by complete idiots. Is it a perfect system? No. Is there an obvious, far superior system? Also, no.
      - lenerdenator 2y ago
        Here's the chart. [0] Review it, then come back to us. [0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
        onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        It's almost as if healthcare spending isn't the only variable that matters - and it matters how fat and sedentary your population is, and how much you pay doctors and nurses. It's almost as if the world isn't so reductive complex issues can be reduced to cute little charts.

gruez 2y ago

>>$50M worth of healthcare is not going to even minutely move the needle. >I have a hard time buying this. Really? You can't cover a few more cents of a few more claims if you reduce c-suite pay? Nice job moving the goalposts from "moving the needle" to "a few more cents of a few more claims". UnitedHealth Group had 371.6 billion in revenue last year. $50 M means they can provide 0.01% more care to their customers. I think it's fair to describe that as "not going to even minutely move the needle".

lenerdenator 2y ago
It moves the needle for the premium-paying customer. Either the numbers matter or they don't. Pick one.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/move_the_needle#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/move_the_needle#English >1. (idiomatic) To change a situation to a noticeable degree Emphasis mine.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    You think over years and a number of bills that cents wouldn't start adding up? It's 100% noticeable. If it weren't, then it wouldn't matter to people like the c-suite who are so focused on making money for themselves.
    - gruez 2y ago
      The numerator might so up but so will the denominator, so it effectively cancels each other out. More to the point, I feel like this argument is over relative vs absolute. It might be noticeable" to a single person, but given that we're talking about the healthcare system as a whole, it's fair to say that it's not "noticeable".