61–70 of 370 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Health insurers in the US have a cap on how much of premiums can go to profits.
IIRC, it's 15%, meaning that they can only have $675,000,000,000.00 in profits. That is $675,000,000,000.00 they can take from us and instead of using for healthcare or even healthcare administration, it's just additional money that they took.
When did they take it?
All the 10-Ks are showing me 5% or less profit margins.
Anecdote: I recently had my yearly glasses update. Cost was $188 to me + $20 of insurance copay, so the glasses provider charged $208 for the glasses. That's not too bad, so I asked how much it would be to replace/update the lenses on my old frames, entirely at my charge. It would've been $450. Just for the lenses. I passed. I find it scandalous how much they can charge when just before they were perfectly happy to a…
Painstakingly, methodically, improve it, taking care at each step that you're making it better. :)
Wait till you find out how much it actually costs doctors/providers to render some of these services! Do you like 90% margins? Doctors sure do! :)
This is regulation everybody should be able to get behind. How are these markets supposed to function efficiently with healthy competition if critical information like this is hidden away?
Because the obscurity of the prices is a result of regulation as well. We need less layers of control with "unintended" consequences.
Anecdote: I recently had my yearly glasses update. Cost was $188 to me + $20 of insurance copay, so the glasses provider charged $208 for the glasses. That's not too bad, so I asked how much it would be to replace/update the lenses on my old frames, entirely at my charge. It would've been $450. Just for the lenses. I passed. I find it scandalous how much they can charge when just before they were perfectly happy to a…
They likely had lenses already available for the frames they had in stock, or were frequently making batches of them. OTOH the frames you already owned may be out of style, so they would have needed to grind a totally custom pair of lenses, just for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would get in the way of unadulterated profit , you see.
Health insurers in the US have a cap on how much of premiums can go to profits.
In the most recent case I tried to get a written quote for procedures because of past problems. I was given the run-around until all I could get was a verbal quote over the phone. But if that wasn't good enough, my only recourse was to delay getting a suspicious lump examined. I was then charged more than I was quoted, and I was even billed for procedures they didn't do. I actually heard one of the employees say "I added that because I thought he was using insurance". Still - hours of phone calls over several weeks before they would even bill me correctly without adding tests that they had no results from. And even then - more expensive than they told me because the person I was transferred to over the phone was in a different state than the clinic I called in the first place.
Absolutely rotten.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that there are at least 5 large insurers competing nationwide and all have 5% or less profit margins means there is lots of competition, and if they are not providing the best prices, their customers will go elsewhere. See pharmacy forums as an example for all the pharmacists complaining about how independent pharmacies are so tough to operate due to ever smaller payments from insurance companies for the pas…
No, it means that Obamacare is working as written[1]. Insurer profit margins are set to the legally permitted ((medical bills) * 15%) - operating costs. If insurers want to make more money, they can either make medical bills more expensive, or reduce their own operating costs. Reducing the cost of medical bills does not increase the amount of money they make, unless it means they are capturing market share from a com…
> Will my workplace ever switch their insurer provider of choice? Almost certainly 'no'.
Why not? I am an employer and we evaluate the cost of health insurance every year. It is a huge expense, so why would we not shop around?
This is regulation everybody should be able to get behind. How are these markets supposed to function efficiently with healthy competition if critical information like this is hidden away?