3 ms·
Insurance companies can’t really work as things that change the expected value of the service they insure, it just doesn’t make sense. They exist to cover massi
by bee_rider 1y ago
Insurance companies can’t really work as things that change the expected value of the service they insure, it just doesn’t make sense. They exist to cover massive unlikely risks. I don’t blame insurance companies for being annoying services with negative expected values (that’s just inevitable).
But, whoever decided to start marketing things like low deductibles and out-of-pocket costs as a premium service, that person bears a lot of blame. They are the one that decided customers shouldn’t see most of their healthcare costs.
The ideal that actually lets customers see pricing info is: a health savings account, a high-deductible insurance with no cap, and then as a cost savings measure the insurance company can incentivize yearly check-ups.
Mixing in employer insurance also caused a skew, because it makes people see their employer insurance as a perk. A perk should be something you actually experience. Employers should dump money into your HSA, and subsidize a gym/healthy snacks for their campus instead (some do, of course).
- labcomputer 1y ago> The ideal that actually lets customers see pricing info is: a health savings account, a high-deductible insurance with no cap, and then as a cost savings measure the insurance company can incentivize yearly check-ups. Well, that's just silly. The whole point of insurance is to cover tail cases: Catastrophic costs with low probability. If there is no cap, why have insurance at all?
- bee_rider 1y agoSorry, I think I might have accidentally use a term-of-art, and misused it. I meant “no cap on how much the insurance will pay out.” But, when in the same sentence with “high deductible,” the more reasonable parse (and the one I think you read it as) is “no cap on out-of-pocket expenses.” My bad.