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Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

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Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#501

Post by robbiemitchell »

noobermin wrote: post #424
robbiemitchell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the benefits a profit motive brings to insurance companies is pushing back on improper billing by providers (doctors/hospitals) and negotiating lowest possible care and drug rates. Tech-focused insurers like Oscar also invest heavily to help guide members toward better care paths, which if done well lead to better care at less expense (for both the member and insurer). Unrelated: one of the worst parts of insu…

This is diametrically opposed to the facts. People need to stop making arguments like this about profit driven insurance when our system has the US spend the most per capita amongst modern nations with mediocre results.

That’s in large part because the costs of healthcare are crazy high, not the cost of insurance.

They are interrelated, yes. But fundamentally we are at a place where providers, especially hospitals, are billing insanely high rates for services compared to other countries.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#502

Post by microcolonel »

vanderZwan wrote: post #500
microcolonel wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the Marxist part that makes it not work, doesn't matter which inspired party adds their flavour. If you want Marx's society (not saying his analysis, especially of his surroundings, was wholely incorrect), it can only be had by force. I challenge you to convince me to willingly join in your Marxian ideal, until then I will fight it when it comes to my door, like so many in the USSR understandably didn't, com…

> I challenge you to convince me to willingly join in your Marxian ideal, until then I will fight it when it comes to my door, like so many in the USSR understandably didn't, comfortably boiled frogs as the record shows them. a) I don't have a Marxist ideal, don't put yourself in a defensive position against an antagonist that is not there. I just don't mix up Marxist economic theory with Communism and Leninism. b) Y…

> the many people that resisted and were killed off by Lenin & Co when they took power.

Show me the scores of people taking a stand while being placed under arbitrary arrest. Yeah, sure some people resisted, a whole lot more memorable than the millions who walked with their captors straight to the grave. It's not like they didn't resist because they were bad people or something, they just had no tools to deal with any of this, who on earth did?

For the most part, you're taken by night or in transit, and they show up to dig up your trash to find your cherished letters or the wrong souvenir, you're still wondering if all the other people who were arrested did what they were accused of. What does resisting that even look like?

This was all to prove some fantasy of a man with a weak spirit and infinite capacity to look outside himself for fault; and for Lenin and Stalin it was just their ticket into town.

> a) I don't have a Marxist ideal, don't put yourself in a defensive position against an antagonist that is not there. I just don't mix up Marxist economic theory with Communism and Leninism.

I didn't say you had one, really, I said that if one were to be instituted, it seems it could only happen by force. Marx's conclusions are the fundamental source of the most inhumane behaviours of the USSR, the specifics are just gory decoration. It doesn't matter if the dissidents happen to be suppressed by genocide, imprisonment, or exile; only by suppressing the dissidents can you institute the envisioned solution. There is a considerable proportion of society which will simply not agree to have their life's work taken from them. Tell me what the important difference is between a solution which passively requires genocide, and a realized implementation of that solution.

Granted I'm underslept right now, so say whatever, I'll see it when I'm back on earth.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#503

Post by comicjk »

LinuxBender wrote: post #416
mapgrep wrote: post #176

As some other people have mentioned below, the much lauded[1] vertically integrated health provider Kaiser Permanente started this way, as the health provider caring for the workers of an enlightened large employer, Kaiser Steel, which at the time was a massive shipbuilder for the Navy and others headquartered in California with a major presence in the SF Bay Area. I was briefly covered by a Kaiser plan, and have a l…

I was with Kaiser for a long time because I never needed a doctor. When I did, I had to fire kaiser. They nearly killed me. Talking to my coworkers, it turns out this is quite common. They hire a lot of people that received their medical degree in countries with much lower standards. It's actually quite concerning how many people I know IRL that lost friends due to misdiagnosis by Kaiser. It doesn't help that you can…

If you want to convince me, show me the relevant statistics. Medical errors are not unknown from other health providers.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#504

Post by shanusmagnus »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #501
noobermin wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is diametrically opposed to the facts. People need to stop making arguments like this about profit driven insurance when our system has the US spend the most per capita amongst modern nations with mediocre results.

That’s in large part because the costs of healthcare are crazy high, not the cost of insurance. They are interrelated, yes. But fundamentally we are at a place where providers, especially hospitals, are billing insanely high rates for services compared to other countries.

It's nutty to me that yours is the first comment that I'm reading in this thread that has mentioned that. The provider part of this shit sandwich (to steal a phrase used elsewhere in this thread) is by far the more problematic piece.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#505

Post by shanusmagnus »

djsumdog wrote: post #225
bostonpete wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems to overlook the fact that insurance companies negotiate better rates on many (most?) services than an individual would get going at it alone. From that perspective, I think it's reasonable to say that in our current system, insurance can allow you to essentially avoid high prices even for things that are predictable/regular.

I worked in health care and saw so much money wasted. The ACA was suppose to bring the same risk factors to everyone, so you got the same premiums based on age, gender and smoking status. Big companies got big breaks for employees and the rich paid less. This might have worked if everyone was required to buy from the market place and there were no employer plans. Obama's famous "You can keep your existing health cove…

It shouldn't have a fee for existing so long as you're cool with me not paying a fee for when your body breaks down.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#506

Post by shanusmagnus »

chimeracoder wrote: post #97
SkyPuncher wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always wondered what's stopping someone from creating a non-profit and just having people join it in order to give the non-profit ability to negotiate lower prices. Likely the fact that many of these prices are basically standardized because of CMS. Providers basically look to what the Medicare/Medicaid standard is as a benchmark for pricing. As a provider why accept a lower price from insurance when the gov't…

> As a provider why accept a lower price from insurance when the gov't is providing a backlog of people at predetermined prices? This isn't even an option on the table. Private insurers are generally required by law to pay more than Medicare does. And besides, Medicare reimburses rates that are below COGS, so providers charge private insurers more in order to make up the difference. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able t…

This is so important and so little understood: Medicare can demand the prices that it does because other payers will be making up for it. Their low prices create externalities in the rest of the insured market.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#507

Post by funkulation »

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…

This system already exists in Israel.

There are Kibbutzim, full blown cooperative communities spread across the country (which were the initial backbone of the country but have decline over time). They share income depending on the Kibbutz, but some of these communities are very productive and very well off.

There are also Moshavs that aren’t quite as collective but still cooperative. Everyone in the Moshav shares a fixed piece of land in the community but production and income is controlled by the individual laborer. However, the community will still share costs together, like machinery, supplies, marketing of output.

Both are 70 year+ running models and proven to be successful no reason they can’t everywhere else.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#508

Post by mabufo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #216
dawhizkid wrote: post #127

I strongly feel that what needs to be changed is employer-based healthcare itself. It is really kind of crazy, if you think about it, how closely the quality of our healthcare and the healthcare of our dependents is tied to the company we choose to be working for at the moment. If you or a dependent take a very specific expensive medication that isn't covered by a plan a new employer might offer, then you pretty much…

I have a choice of exactly two health insurance companies because that's who my employer selected for me. Both are for profit companies, with Aetna just posting record profits, and we see our premiums rise year upon year. But beyond me, the fact that someone working minimum wage, unemployed, or at a startup using the Obamacare exchange pays more than an executive at a fortune 500 makes no rational sense. That's becau…

70% of americans live paycheck to paycheck. There is no money to put into an HSA - let alone to put into a savings account.

Medicare for all is the only sense making option, truly. Insurance doesn't make sense in the context of healthcare.

Everything else is just a half measure. Healthcare makes zero sense as a market; it is completely busted.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#509

Post by gbacon »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #504
robbiemitchell wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s in large part because the costs of healthcare are crazy high, not the cost of insurance. They are interrelated, yes. But fundamentally we are at a place where providers, especially hospitals, are billing insanely high rates for services compared to other countries.

It's nutty to me that yours is the first comment that I'm reading in this thread that has mentioned that. The provider part of this shit sandwich (to steal a phrase used elsewhere in this thread) is by far the more problematic piece.

When you use a service without paying for it (e.g., television, radio, Yoogle, Facepage, and so on), you are not the customer but the vector to get to the real customer who is paying. No, buying a TV or paying your ISP is not paying for the services you are accessing.

What Americans think of as “health” “insurance” fits this model. Providers are in the business of soaking their customers the various tax-favored third-party payers for all they can. Of course prices rise continually. People are stirred into a frenzy about rising costs and demand that politicians just do something! The insurers get more tax-favored money that providers happily mop up.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

#510

Post by dredmorbius »

tengbretson wrote: post #479
shams93 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure this fully backs the statistic above, but a detailed USDA report:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/74672/60298_ei...

It doesn't clearly state how many farmers lease land, but 39% of acreage is rented.

The 98% statistic appears in the follwing item, but concerns white vs black land ownership, not rental vs. ownership:

https://inequality.org/research/owns-land/

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