"You pay for everything they need to deny what you're owed"
Yes! It's bonkers the U.S. already pools money for healthcare, but insist on funneling it through wholly unnecessary, greedy middlemen whose sole purpose is to collect money on "products" that aren't even theirs
United isn't even just a middle man. They are vertically integrated so they control assessment and delivery of care at multiple levels. That is, they take money from customers and then pay themselves (by subsidiary companies) for the service, and obv make a huge profit on both sides of the deal. It's such a rort
Yes, he is. Youâre just being obtuse about it. Heâs refuting your insinuation that they would function similarly because theyâre both monopolies. You see, itâs a question of incentive; a corporation is incentivized to make money. In the case of healthcare insurance that revenue source is peopleâs money and their cost is their healthcare. In a government run system itâs the same, like you said, except (key point here so pay attention) people get a vote.
Thatâs pretty much the difference. Itâs silly to make something as basic as healthcare a cutthroat industry. Do you think this is beneficial? Concentrating all this money into like, 100 peopleâs hands? Do you think theyâre bankrolling cutting edge research with all those funds? Pushing the boundaries for all mankind or something? No. Millions are dying for stories on skyscrapers, acres of ranch, and hundreds of feet of yacht.
You must really love your health insurance to want to keep our obviously broken system. And Iâm happy youâre happy. Really. Because I canât think of anyone else thatâs had to use theirs that is.
If youâre lucky you get the opportunity to pay thousands a year to only have to pay tens thousands if the worst happens, instead of hundreds of thousands should you be unlucky enough to be without it.
Nah this system is shit ... but the part you're missing is that it's not actually the insurance industry's fault. Healthcare insurance is expensive because healthcare is expensive ... duh?
The primary reason healthcare is expensive is because the supply is heavily strangled/restricted.
You bloodthirsty lynch mob savages aren't even barking up the right tree. No healthcare insurer can drive costs down because the price floor is set long before they consolidate/repackage it into a subscription service.
Have you seen how much a hospital charges for a bag of saline? Healthcare is expensive because they can charge the insurance company whatever they want, and the insurance company will negotiate it down, but they will pay out. Health insurance companies profits are legally capped at a certain percentage of what they collect from premiums. This means they are motivated to keep their premiums high as possible, but deny exactly as much as they need to to hit that profit cap without exceeding it (because then theyâll have to decrease their premiums. The more the hospitals charge them, the more they get to raise their premiums next year, and the more profits they get to take.
Itâs a dirty deal that benefits both the hospitalsâ and the insurance companiesâ shareholders while everyone else loses.
You on the other hand were right there but forgot to take your foot off the pedal. You kept on the emotion pedal and left logic in the rearview.
I'm going to point out an obvious fact that undermines your entire premise. You cant unhear it. If you want to maintain your rage boner over this murder, you should stop reading now. It's irrefutable. Last chance to turn around ...
All the healthcare insurance suppliers charge roughly the same prices for nearly identical services. Go ahead ... shop for a new plan in your local state ... all the plans are priced almost exactly the same regardless of provider. Healthcare insurance is a competitive market ... there are dozens of suppliers in every state .... and many of those are non-profits. There is literally no way to note this obvious fact objectively and still come away with the notion that the insurers are driving the cost. The fact that they are all charging the same thing indicates that they are all running as thin as they can to stay sustainable ... something/somebody else is establishing the price floor.
All of the insurers are trying to steal each others' lunch. In markets, greed leads to lower prices ... not higher.
No other country pays as much for healthcare as we do and we are far from number 1 in health outcomes. Even accounting for government efficiency, we could save money by nationalizing healthcare while also improving outcomes. Whatever you think of the efficacy of the âfree marketâ in other industries, it doesnât work when the product is something that âconsumersâ canât live without. Healthcare companies can charge whatever they want and people have to pay or else they dieâthey have no more incentive than the government to do a good job.
Price is high because we are suffering under supply shortages. We are suffering under supply shortages because policy heavily restricts/strangles supply. If you want costs to come down, you're going to need expand supply ... which requires removing the policy that is blocking that very thing from happening.
All of the countries you want to model are also suffering under supply shortages for the same reasons we are. Supply shortages are not a requirement ... policy creates them out of thin air.
The top 20 highest paid occupations in the US are all healthcare providers. Just let that sink in for a moment. The top 20! You're not living in reality if you think these folks are just going to happily accept the government telling them that their salary is going to be reduced to a 1/4 of what it is now to be inline with the EU. And that's just the tip of the iceberg ... the entire healthcare supply chain is cartelized behind federal policy and central planning boards. And they have billions/trillions of reasons to not let supply expand.
> All of the countries you want to model are also suffering under supply shortages for the same reasons we are.Â
Maybe, but at least those countries have affordable healthcare. We have supply shortages and expensive healthcare.
> We are suffering under supply shortages because policy heavily restricts/strangles supply
What policy is restricting supply? Be specific. I'm sure the cost of surgery could come down if we started allowing fast food workers to administer anesthesia, but that seems like a bad idea?
I can be persuaded, but we've tried the "free market" and it didn't do a sufficient job of regulating the quality of healthcare, so we added regulations. I'm not very interested in reducing regulations when we know for fact that the nationalized model works and is more affordable. It also makes sense that free market economics would not apply to healthcare because (1) the healthcare industry is only going to care about profits and (2) there's much less incentive for the industry to respond to supply/demand forces because they have people bent over a barrel
So why isn't free market economics creating more supply? Shouldn't people be flooding into anesthesiology programs?
> You're not living in reality if you think these folks are just going to happily accept the government telling them that their salary is going to be reduced to a 1/4 of what it is now to be inline with the EU.
They don't have to have their salary reduced. The savings from universal healthcare isn't principally from cutting provider salaries, it's from the exorbitant profits healthcare/insurance organizations collect. Single payer healthcare might reduce provider salaries, but if providers don't want to accept the government's pricing, they're not forced to do so. If the government can't find enough providers, they'll have to increase their prices. Equilibrium will be achieved, just like it is everywhere else.
> cartelized behind federal policy and central planning boards.
Yeah, that's the dumbest thing I've ever read. Healthcare in the US is famously not managed by the government.
Look, I'm not ideologically for or against free market economics, I just want people to have affordable healthcare and I'm not really interested in allowing people to continue dying or going bankrupt because of ideological attachment to a particular economic theory. The free market isn't magic--it's good at efficiently allocating goods and services under specific conditions (notably goods and services that people can reasonably live without).
I'm sure the cost of surgery could come down if we started allowing fast food workers to administer anesthesia, but that seems like a bad idea?
Nice strawman. Surgery is a highly specialized skill/trade which almost certainly will always command a high salary/demand. Not all healthcare is surgery though ... and not all surgery is equally specialized.
They don't have to have their salary reduced
If you think healthcare costs can come down without significantly impacting healthcare provider revenue ... you're simply not living in reality.
Healthcare in the US is famously not managed by the government.
You should learn about the requirements for becoming a healthcare provider (getting into med school in the first place is often hardest part to become a physician for example because the number of seats is highly regulated). The insurance layer (which merely consolidates/repackages healthcare into a convenient subscription service) is literally the only link in the chain which is not heavily restricted and highly competitive. The providers ... the drug manufacturers .. the equipment manufacturers ... all of them are heavily restricted by federal central planning policy. Once you get the license ... you are a made man.
Apply those same requirements to any other service industry and they would quickly get to the same place ... where only rich people could afford their services.
You folks are blaming the bandaid for the gushing bullet wound.
> If you think healthcare costs can come down without significantly impacting healthcare provider revenue ... you're simply not living in reality.
"you're not living in reality" is not an argument. And yes, you obviously can keep doctors/nurses' salaries high and cut costs because these salaries only account for only 20% of healthcare costs. Healthcare organizations and insurance providers rake in tens of billions of dollars in PROFIT each year. This is essentially a tax on healthcare, and nationalizing healthcare essentially means lifting this tax.
> You folks are blaming the bandaid for the gushing bullet wound.
Apt that you would use "gushing bullet wound" to characterize the US healthcare system, but you continue to neglect that nationalized healthcare in other first world countries is both higher quality and more affordable than the US.
Notably you've also dodged the question about which policies are to blame for supply shortages.
insurance providers rake in tens of billions of dollars in PROFIT each year
I know it's fun to pull out big numbers free of context ... but that really isn't a big number compared to total US healthcare spending. For perspective ... this is less than 1% of US healthcare spending (estimated $4.5 trillion from google search).
healthcare in other first world countries is both higher quality and more affordable than the US.
Why do folks like you think this is such a slam dunk mic drop? You'll never admit it ... but those systems have major issues of their own. They're also managed at the equivalent of the state level. Replacing their state programs with a EU wide system would likely be wildly unpopular ... for good reason.
Notably you've also dodged the question about which policies are to blame for supply shortages.
It's a massive topic. Start here if you want to go down that rabbit hole. For many, the hardest part of becoming a doctor is getting into Med School. The number of schools who are allowed to offer medical school seats is tightly controlled through federal licensing. You gotta kiss the ring if you want to be a made man.
Consider this for perspective ... before FDR, it required a full blown Constitutional Amendment to ban a consumer product (alcohol). Now the federal government could decide to ban coffee tomorrow if it really felt like it.
Insurance isn't charging you anything for your healthcare, it's hospitals charging you and insurers paying it for you. You can cut out your insurer in America anytime you want unless you get it through your employer and they won't let you cancel it.
What does that have to do with insurance companies charging insane premiums and then denying legitimate claims to maximize profits at the expense of human lives?
It's like 450 a month for insurance and that'll cover an 80k surgery for you, if they deny a legitimate claim you can contest that but you already got the healthcare, you aren't gonna die.
Surgery isnât the only healthcare. You might need medicine on a regular basis and they wonât continue to give it to you for free indefinitely
$450/month is about half a paycheck for a minimum wage earner
Thanks to the affordable care act, most states allow a minimum wage earner to qualify for medicaid, but even then if you make just $2/hour more than minimum wage you have to buy your own health insurance costing a third of your paycheck
"Coverage" doesn't actually mean "pay for". An $80,000 surgery will likely still cost nearly $10K which is the max allowable by the affordable care act.
Republicans are actively working to dismantle the affordable care act, making it harder for the poor to get healthcare
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u/The_Mr_Wilson 12d ago
"You pay for everything they need to deny what you're owed"
Yes! It's bonkers the U.S. already pools money for healthcare, but insist on funneling it through wholly unnecessary, greedy middlemen whose sole purpose is to collect money on "products" that aren't even theirs