61–70 of 111 posts
I think these 3 will no longer provide health insurance for their employees, they are going to create a new more affordable framework and they will allow any other large company to participate. The goal will be keep the cost of insurance the same for the employees, while eliminating the cost for the companies entirely, which is why this will take off. It’s crazy to have employers paying for healthcare, this I believe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the mechanism? I don't think it is realistic to assume that health care can run on employee premiums alone. In fact we know it can't b/c individual premiums are outrageous. So I don't think your premise is realistic. These billion dollar companies self insure and Buffet's companies offer reinsurance for the most costly million dollar claims. Even though they self insure, they will pay a company like Cigna a p…
Premiums are as high as they are because health care is run as a for profit industry - health care in America is orders of magnitude more expensive than in other countries. If you remove the profit motive prices will drop down towards something more reasonable, in this situation it's not unreasonable to expect that the system could be maintained with employee premiums. The cost of initialisation of services will be h…
That's disproven by the fact that for decades premiums were extremely reasonable. In fact, premiums roughly tripled in just 20 years. That increase is radically beyond cost inflation in most everything else except university tuition costs. That spike wasn't caused by healthcare being for-profit, it was for-profit in the decades prior to that cost explosion too. You'll have to actually explain the specific cause for why costs suddenly exploded higher in such a short span of time. Compare premiums in 2015 vs 1995, on a per capita income basis, the difference is extreme. Why weren't they always so high?
Here's a hint: the same exact thing happened at the same exact time in the university education system as well. Previously, before 2000 roughly, US university costs were far more modest. You could go to a top tier university in the 1970s and 1980s and pay for it entirely with a part-time job. Student loan debt went up five fold in ten years, at the exact same time healthcare costs exploded higher.
Want to guess which entity caused both cost inflation outcomes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about $19K for employer-provided family-coverage. Considering the three companies have about 1M stuff in total, that represents ~$20B in annual recurring costs. This effort combined with accelerating automation will lead to a much better capital:labor cost ratio (and, depending on who you ask, reduction in labor costs is massively bad for wealth equality).
I guess you meant "staff", not "stuff". BTW, I think that the 19k/year is not representative of very large companies, which usually negotiate better terms. Still, your point stands.
https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/8...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the mechanism? I don't think it is realistic to assume that health care can run on employee premiums alone. In fact we know it can't b/c individual premiums are outrageous. So I don't think your premise is realistic. These billion dollar companies self insure and Buffet's companies offer reinsurance for the most costly million dollar claims. Even though they self insure, they will pay a company like Cigna a p…
There are multiple ways to get insurance without dealing directly with traditional insurance companies.I'm not saying they're perfect, but then again, neither is the current for profit. Christian Health Ministries - http://www.chministries.org/ Medi-Share - https://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/ Kaiser Permanente - https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/ Taylor University is self-insured.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about $19K for employer-provided family-coverage. Considering the three companies have about 1M stuff in total, that represents ~$20B in annual recurring costs. This effort combined with accelerating automation will lead to a much better capital:labor cost ratio (and, depending on who you ask, reduction in labor costs is massively bad for wealth equality).
Do you have a source backing on $19K?
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premium...
"According to the KFF 2016 survey, the average family coverage premium is $18,412 per year and single coverage is $6,435 per year."
https://www.groupmgmt.com/blog/post/2017/09/05/How-Group-Hea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Premiums are as high as they are because health care is run as a for profit industry - health care in America is orders of magnitude more expensive than in other countries. If you remove the profit motive prices will drop down towards something more reasonable, in this situation it's not unreasonable to expect that the system could be maintained with employee premiums. The cost of initialisation of services will be h…
The traditional economic view is that private, profit seeking enterprises actually offer better prices to consumers because of competition, while monopoly firms charge higher prices bc they have more market power, and government run enterprises yield lower quality products because they don't have incentive to compete on quality. India has a very competitive healthcare system that is largely out of pocket and while th…
One has to consider that many people in the US don't consume healthcare because they can't afford it (hence the lower life expectancy), whereas in other countries everybody who needs it can access it, with almost no limit.
So the part of GDP represented by healthcare in the US is much lower than it "should" be; or, to put it another way, there's a huge growth opportunity if one can lower prices.
Incumbent actors may prefer profits over volume, but they're vulnerable.
I think these 3 will no longer provide health insurance for their employees, they are going to create a new more affordable framework and they will allow any other large company to participate. The goal will be keep the cost of insurance the same for the employees, while eliminating the cost for the companies entirely, which is why this will take off. It’s crazy to have employers paying for healthcare, this I believe…
maybe if health insurance becomes one large monopoly, they can have enough leverage to force the health care providers to lower their prices to a reasonable level similar to that of countries where the government has that role (of being a monopoly payer, and forcing the costs to be lower by negotiation leverage)
I think these 3 will no longer provide health insurance for their employees, they are going to create a new more affordable framework and they will allow any other large company to participate. The goal will be keep the cost of insurance the same for the employees, while eliminating the cost for the companies entirely, which is why this will take off. It’s crazy to have employers paying for healthcare, this I believe…
Also, they are required to provide coverage under the ACA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cycle you mentioned is certainly a vicious one. But you missed another: their cap on profit is percentage based. This disincentivizes the insurer from truly attempting to contain costs, because while the percentage of income they can take as profit is capped, the absolute value is not. This leads to underinvestment in attempting to contain costs except to the level that they can retain as overhead and a cycle of…
That's interesting, hadn't heard that before. The combination of Amazon et als buying power could potentially drive out some of that inefficiency as they negotiate lower premiums and payers lower prices by cutting some of the "fluff"
There are plenty of ways to align the incentives of insurance companies with those of the insured. But a static max ratio between medical expenses and overhead is not one of them. Because then there is literally no upside to reigning in medical expenses, as every effect of doing so is negative to the insurer.
So instead of trying to make their medical spending more effective, they focus on
1) Making their operations as lean as possible (so they can squeeze as much profit out of that allowable overhead percentage as possible), and
2) Vertically integrate so they're on the other side of that medical spending where that cap doesn't apply any more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Premiums are as high as they are because health care is run as a for profit industry - health care in America is orders of magnitude more expensive than in other countries. If you remove the profit motive prices will drop down towards something more reasonable, in this situation it's not unreasonable to expect that the system could be maintained with employee premiums. The cost of initialisation of services will be h…
The traditional economic view is that private, profit seeking enterprises actually offer better prices to consumers because of competition, while monopoly firms charge higher prices bc they have more market power, and government run enterprises yield lower quality products because they don't have incentive to compete on quality. India has a very competitive healthcare system that is largely out of pocket and while th…
