Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#471

Post by learc83 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #374

learc83 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really how it works. The "ever increasing" pie would have to come directly from increasing subscriber premiums, not from cutting costs and pocketing the difference the OP indicated. It doesn't matter how much they play with pricing on the back end, the company can't make more than 20% profit from subscriber premiums.

There is a whole lot of backscratching with the profiteers taking their cut of the 80%. That is why we get $30 Tylenol pills under the guise of "care".

Hospitals aren't charging insurance companies $30 for Tylenol and then paying insurance companies under the table if that's what you're alleging.

That's completely illegal and it's just too noticeable for them to do it large scale.

The OP was making a baseless claim because they didn't know what they were talking about, and you're now grasping at straws supporting their claim for some reason.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#472

Post by sagichmal » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

bgibson wrote: post #407

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.

Reducing interdependence in human society mitigates systemic risk. It absolutely is a virtue to be collectively working towards.

Systemic risk reduction is one effect of reducing interdependence. What are the others? On balance, are they net-negative or net-positive?

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#473

Post by sanmon3186 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:23 AM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #73

bpicolo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while - what would insurance companies (and even other companies in every vertical) look like with some incentive other than profit? Paying good salaries is one thing, but doing it for the sake of external shareholders is a different case. Newman's Own is one interesting (and successful) example I can think of that's an otherwise for-profit company acting effectively a…

USAA would be a classic example

Absolutely. So based on what I know their financial products and customer service is awesome but I doubt if it comes at a price which is lower than the market (even after considering what they give back to its members).

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#474

Post by sagichmal » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

adreamingsoul wrote: post #447

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it also be possible to see that as rural residents putting on a brave face? The general trend has been towards urbanization globally for the past century or more, and relatively few young people growing up in rural communities seem to be interested in staying in them in the US[1]. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-20/rural-ame...

That's not true. Almost every person I know in my generation is working hard to buy a piece of land in a rural community.

And every person I know in my generation is working hard to buy a flat in a major urban center. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#475

Post by nradov » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

013a wrote: post #90

dekhn wrote: post #12

Here's what this is about. Large successful companies contract out their health insurance and care to external companies. Most of those companies are profit centers- they provide a service, but they take a very large profit on it. Much of that profit is just waste- it's money that goes to people who aren't innovating, or providing value, just acting as gatekeepers (note: this is just my opinion, not provable fact). C…

Insurance companies, by and large, are gate keepers to capital. The "best" have a lot of highly innovate algorithms, machine learning, and data collection, but they're all designed to maximize the profit of the company by accurately pricing premiums. An accurately priced premium means customers who don't their services less pay less; in effect, they're using data to increase premiums for the customers who actually us…

The companies involved in this new venture were already self insured. They were paying for employee health care via third-party administrators, not buying insurance.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#476

Post by shams93 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 3:01 AM 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…

The problem is around 98% of farmers have to lease their land. Most farmland in the US is owned by a handful of people.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#477

Post by mark-r » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #430

jedgardyson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a setup for a broader push into healthcare by these companies. The sector is still growing, Amazon is already working out the pharmacy space. "[F]ree from profit-making incentives and constraints" sounds like the strategy they've used so far to dominate sections of online retail.

I have some medical supplies that Amazon will sell me without a prescription. I used them last time because I neglected to order far enough ahead of time, and the game of tag between my doctor and my pharmacy would have taken too long - Amazon Prime to the rescue! Today I pick up a new prescription at my pharmacy, and I'm curious to know if my insurance copay is less than what Amazon charged. I'm guessing it could go…

The verdict is in. Amazon with free Prime shipping: $18.90. CVS insurance co-pay: $22.50.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#478

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 3:19 AM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #459

visarga wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Distributism (also known as distributionism or distributivism) is an economic ideology that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno. > According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right, and the means of producti…

Well, achieving the Marxist utopia involves forcing the genuine owners of capital goods ("the means of production") to surrender those to the state, in practice usually requiring imprisonment, execution, and initially a certain amount of genocide to avoid revolt.

Clumsily named, the aspects of "distributism" being lauded here only seem to involve convincing people to partly own instutitions rather than simply transacting with them as a third party. Seems to me that this reading of "distributism" is just capitalism plus a social norm of a bias toward involvement and ownership, rather than just employment and consumption.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#479

Post by tengbretson » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #476

visarga wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem is around 98% of farmers have to lease their land. Most farmland in the US is owned by a handful of people.

Really want to see a source on this one.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#480

Post by ian0 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

013a wrote: post #90

dekhn wrote: post #12

Here's what this is about. Large successful companies contract out their health insurance and care to external companies. Most of those companies are profit centers- they provide a service, but they take a very large profit on it. Much of that profit is just waste- it's money that goes to people who aren't innovating, or providing value, just acting as gatekeepers (note: this is just my opinion, not provable fact). C…

Insurance companies, by and large, are gate keepers to capital. The "best" have a lot of highly innovate algorithms, machine learning, and data collection, but they're all designed to maximize the profit of the company by accurately pricing premiums. An accurately priced premium means customers who don't their services less pay less; in effect, they're using data to increase premiums for the customers who actually us…

The last few insurance companies Ive delt with seem to act more like banks giving loans. Twice now, they have priced premiums for our company policy low in the first year before increasing them the following year based on how much was claimed. One agent actually admitted it was to "recoup costs".

We joked that the meme where actuaries were being replaced by machine learning was actually just the insurer firing actuaries because they figured out they could just demand the money back from the client after a claim.