4 ms·

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health

The costs also used to be a lot lower - at least for most people who just pay the premium and don’t need much care. Now it’s not uncommon for a family’s health insurance to cost more than their housing. The people who are mad are those who are paying more and not experiencing the benefits.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-when-health-insurers-place-profits-over-people/ https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-... > In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made $6.7 billion, Elevance Health made $6 billion and CVS Health made $4.2 billion. All told, America’s largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion of profits in 2022. Universal healthcare is good. America's for profit system is bad. You have to get rid of for profit insurers (to start, lots of other changes need to be made as well, PBM and private equity ownership, etc). Is there will to do that? What is it going to take to get there? Every other OECD country has a functioning healthcare system, to keep the existing system in the US is a policy choice. Edit: Absolutely wild to see the apologists who say, "This is fine." to billions of dollars being sucked out of the healthcare system as profits instead of being spent on care or reduced premiums. Investors Are Pressing UnitedHealth Group to Deny More Care - https://jacobin.com/2025/06/investors-unitedhealth-group-care-denial-insurance https://jacobin.com/2025/06/investors-unitedhealth-group-car... - June 10th, 2025 Democrat senators probe UnitedHealth over nursing home care denials - https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/democrat-senators-probe-unitedhealth-nursing-home-denials-wyden-warren/757062/ https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/democrat-senators-probe-... - August 8th, 2025 Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth-nursing-homes-payments-hospital-transfers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth... - May 21st, 2025 > UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found. Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant. In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence. As long as a profit motive exists, there will be incentives to reduce or avoid care for more profits.
- Swizec 1y ago
  All you need to know about America’s health system is this graph comparing average cost to life expectancy of OECD countries. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... USA has an order of magnitude higher cost but middling life expectancy comparable to Argentina, Poland, Peru, Colombia etc.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparison-of-health-systems/ https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparis... > Unlike the U.S., similarly large and wealthy nations have long had universal or near-universal health coverage and more robust access to health care. Although the U.S. has recently reached an all-time high rate of insurance coverage, it still lags behind its peers and the ongoing disenrollments from Medicaid may cause the uninsured rate to rise. Additionally, even people who are insured in the U.S. often face such high out-of-pocket costs for medical care that they go without needed care or incur medical debt. Future policymaking in the U.S. may continue to focus on improving insurance coverage rates and addressing cost-related and other barriers to care.
  - GoatInGrey 1y ago
    But one can very easily argue that American health outcomes are significantly driven by the average number of steps they take per day relative to other geographic peers. Astonishingly few Americans are getting more than 15 minutes of light aerobic exercise in per day. And that exercise is largely being spent moving between seats.
    - Swizec 1y ago
      The actually sad part is that when you split data by race, white American health outcomes are pretty great and in some areas significantly ahead of other countries (if you have a rare cancer, America is the place to be) whereas not-white American health outcomes are ... not great. > AIAN (67.9 years) and Black (72.8 years) people had a shorter life expectancy compared to White people (77.5 years) as of 2022, and AIAN, Hispanic, and Black people experienced larger declines in life expectancy than White people between 2019 and 2022 https://www.kff.org/key-data-on-health-and-health-care-by-race-and-ethnicity/ https://www.kff.org/key-data-on-health-and-health-care-by-ra...
epistasis 1y ago
The rises in health care costs were happening long before Obamacare, and if anything Obamacare reduced the rate of rises or kept them at the same level. We have chosen this to have high access, high quality care, while also choosing to reduce health with the way we subsidize our food system and force indolent lifestyle with car-dependent urban planning. The best primer on the choices that make our healthcare expensive, and where the money goes, are in this video: https://youtu.be/QqrpFICtqpQ?si=JOR3COojPD9iLn94 https://youtu.be/QqrpFICtqpQ?si=JOR3COojPD9iLn94 Unfortunately our national discussion of health care is not centered on the reality of the discussion, and is several levels of technical depth too shallow for us to have a public discussion that could reduce costs without reducing the care level for many peopl.
9dev 1y ago
Those people seem incapable of considering that being surrounded by healthy people is a lot more enjoyable than being surrounded by the sick and poor. You don’t live in a vacuum. You interact with a lot of people every day, consciously or not, that probably earn less than you do, and clean your streets, wash your car, care for your elders and children, handle your food, serve your beer, and do a myriad of other things they can only do at good health. That’s where those benefits go - to a functioning society where everyone gets a basic shred of dignity. Is it really so inconceivable to keep a little less of your disposable income in exchange for that?
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  It doesn't seem to me like the current configuration makes people less sick or poor.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-when-health-insurers-place-profits-over-people/ https://penncapital-star.com/uncategorized/americans-suffer-... > In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made $6.7 billion, Elevance Health made $6 billion and CVS Health made $4.2 billion. All told, America’s largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion of profits in 2022. Universal healthcare is good. America's for profit system is bad. You have to get rid of for profit insurers (to start, lots of other changes need to be made as well, PBM and private equity ownership, etc). Is there will to do that? What is it going to take to get there? Every other OECD country has a functioning healthcare system, to keep the existing system in the US is a policy choice. Edit: Absolutely wild to see the apologists who say, "This is fine." to billions of dollars being sucked out of the healthcare system as profits instead of being spent on care or reduced premiums. Investors Are Pressing UnitedHealth Group to Deny More Care - https://jacobin.com/2025/06/investors-unitedhealth-group-care-denial-insurance https://jacobin.com/2025/06/investors-unitedhealth-group-car... - June 10th, 2025 Democrat senators probe UnitedHealth over nursing home care denials - https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/democrat-senators-probe-unitedhealth-nursing-home-denials-wyden-warren/757062/ https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/democrat-senators-probe-... - August 8th, 2025 Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth-nursing-homes-payments-hospital-transfers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth... - May 21st, 2025 > UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found. Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant. In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence. As long as a profit motive exists, there will be incentives to reduce or avoid care for more profits.

Swizec 1y ago
All you need to know about America’s health system is this graph comparing average cost to life expectancy of OECD countries. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... USA has an order of magnitude higher cost but middling life expectancy comparable to Argentina, Poland, Peru, Colombia etc.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparison-of-health-systems/ https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-international-comparis... > Unlike the U.S., similarly large and wealthy nations have long had universal or near-universal health coverage and more robust access to health care. Although the U.S. has recently reached an all-time high rate of insurance coverage, it still lags behind its peers and the ongoing disenrollments from Medicaid may cause the uninsured rate to rise. Additionally, even people who are insured in the U.S. often face such high out-of-pocket costs for medical care that they go without needed care or incur medical debt. Future policymaking in the U.S. may continue to focus on improving insurance coverage rates and addressing cost-related and other barriers to care.
- GoatInGrey 1y ago
  But one can very easily argue that American health outcomes are significantly driven by the average number of steps they take per day relative to other geographic peers. Astonishingly few Americans are getting more than 15 minutes of light aerobic exercise in per day. And that exercise is largely being spent moving between seats.
  - Swizec 1y ago
    The actually sad part is that when you split data by race, white American health outcomes are pretty great and in some areas significantly ahead of other countries (if you have a rare cancer, America is the place to be) whereas not-white American health outcomes are ... not great. > AIAN (67.9 years) and Black (72.8 years) people had a shorter life expectancy compared to White people (77.5 years) as of 2022, and AIAN, Hispanic, and Black people experienced larger declines in life expectancy than White people between 2019 and 2022 https://www.kff.org/key-data-on-health-and-health-care-by-race-and-ethnicity/ https://www.kff.org/key-data-on-health-and-health-care-by-ra...

epistasis 1y ago

The rises in health care costs were happening long before Obamacare, and if anything Obamacare reduced the rate of rises or kept them at the same level. We have chosen this to have high access, high quality care, while also choosing to reduce health with the way we subsidize our food system and force indolent lifestyle with car-dependent urban planning. The best primer on the choices that make our healthcare expensive, and where the money goes, are in this video: https://youtu.be/QqrpFICtqpQ?si=JOR3COojPD9iLn94 https://youtu.be/QqrpFICtqpQ?si=JOR3COojPD9iLn94 Unfortunately our national discussion of health care is not centered on the reality of the discussion, and is several levels of technical depth too shallow for us to have a public discussion that could reduce costs without reducing the care level for many peopl.

9dev 1y ago

Those people seem incapable of considering that being surrounded by healthy people is a lot more enjoyable than being surrounded by the sick and poor. You don’t live in a vacuum. You interact with a lot of people every day, consciously or not, that probably earn less than you do, and clean your streets, wash your car, care for your elders and children, handle your food, serve your beer, and do a myriad of other things they can only do at good health. That’s where those benefits go - to a functioning society where everyone gets a basic shred of dignity. Is it really so inconceivable to keep a little less of your disposable income in exchange for that?

mathiaspoint 1y ago
It doesn't seem to me like the current configuration makes people less sick or poor.