Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

Post by zjaffee » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #325

jawns wrote: post #7

> The three companies said they plan to set up a new independent company "that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints." I wonder if they will be setting it up as a health insurance cooperative, an organizational structure in which the primary goal is to serve its members, rather than to generate value for external shareholders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_cooperative It's not at all…

> distributism Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, bec…

Post by rhizome » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #380

cptskippy wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that Medicare is simple, it's not. It's that there are thousands of private insurance companies each holding thousands of lines of insurance each with their own set of rules comparably complex to Medicare. Medicare is by volume the larges provider but size is actually a benefit because it means that it's dealt with more frequently and is more familiar to care providers. A care provider isn't multi-regional,…

> A care provider isn't multi-regional, thus when they deal with Medicare it's mostly consistent. The interface is at least similar. This is dead wrong. It's easier to deal with a small ha regional insurers than it is to deal with Medicare on the whole. And as I said in the original post, even within a region, Medicare is very heterogeneous. > Medicare is by volume the largest provider.... Medicare isn't simple, it's…

Post by chimeracoder » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #413

chimeracoder wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A care provider isn't multi-regional, thus when they deal with Medicare it's mostly consistent. The interface is at least similar. This is dead wrong. It's easier to deal with a small ha regional insurers than it is to deal with Medicare on the whole. And as I said in the original post, even within a region, Medicare is very heterogeneous. > Medicare is by volume the largest provider.... Medicare isn't simple, it's…

This thread reads like you two are talking past each other, are you saying that cptskippy's point about individual lines on the provider side is either nonexistent or irrelevant?

Post by scribu » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

hathawsh wrote: post #414

sagichmal wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this form of self-reliance a virtue? To me, it looks pathological; certainly not something we should collectively be working towards.

I'm upvoting you just for engaging in this conversation, even though I thoroughly disagree with you. :-) The "distributism" described above is the dream of virtually every rural community. People choose to live in rural communities because it's a little piece of heaven for them: they are surrounded by people they know, they have clean air, the earth is right beneath their feet, the stars are bright, the pace is slow,…

Post by tinokid » Tue, Jan 30, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

erispoe wrote: post #373

mbesto wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to my family as well. My wife broke her ankle and is an avid amateur sports nut. She wanted to go see a top sports doctor (KP has none) and couldn't get KP to cover any of it. To pay out of pocket was anywhere between $20k-$30k. We ended up flying to the UK because it was cheaper and she had a trusted top tier sports injury surgeon she knew there.

Well that's how it works. If you want healthcare to work for everyone, you cannot expect that insurance will reimburse treatment from top doctors outside of rare conditions (where top doctors are the only doctors). Sport related injuries are extremely common. Why should an insurance reimburse an incredibly costly treatment when a normal treatment is good enough for most people? By definition, you cannot have an insur…