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.
Premiums are not the only source of revenue insurers have.
How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
71–80 of 370 posts
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#72"Doctors hate this simple trick to reduce ." That's the strange spam message I could never understand. Surely doctors would be delighted at any method to improve health? So I always assumed the "trick" to be quackery with dangerous side effects. After all, why else would "doctors hate it"? Eventually I realised these messages are exclusively US American, the only place on the planet where doctors could plausibly rese…
You're overcomplicating your analysis. The purpose of ads is to generate attention. The message is effective for Americans for the same way that it is effective for you. It leaves the reader with multiple questions, which is more effective than an alternative phrasing which may leave someone with one or zero questions. Those ads are not posted by medical professionals, they're posted by scam operations.
Healthcare in the US uses specialized labor just like any other developed nation. US doctors are not concerned with financial operations, they're focused on clinical duties. For any typical hospital, the people who do anything with finance or billing are not even in the same building as doctors.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why are insurance company profit margins so low? Why wouldn’t they just jack up premiums irrelevant to their competitors and ignore negotiating pricing and see increasing margins? Low profit margins/multiple sellers indicates a highly competitive field, which means the businesses must be doing something stay in business.
Yeah, but "something" could be advertising, kickbacks, cherry picking, lemon dropping, making comparison difficult, selectively optimizing visible metrics while balancing with dirtbag fine print, etc etc. Competition != Productive Competition
Then the competition who does not do that crap would offer lower premiums and steal business. Just like any other business that wasted money cannot compete with a business that does not waste money.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The information on their landing page was immediately relevant to me https://turquoise.health/ I hope they have a good business plan and manage to stick around!
Thanks! So far, so good. We don't sell anything to consumers. Our products are aimed at the healthcare industry which lets us post information for consumers for free and we have pretty good product-market fit. Obligatory "if anyone is interested in joining a fast growing, series A company doing impactful work, hit up our careers page!"
Interesting, I'm curious since you're in the industry, why do you think medical tourism has never taken off in a big way in the U.S.? I feel like I saw more people willing to go to Poland or Ukraine for things like dental work when I lived in Europe than people in the U.S. willing to go to Mexico or some other destination.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that just mean that they have an interest in keeping these costs high ? The higher the costs, the larger that % is for the in absolute dollars. If all the costs come down, they are allowed to make less money.
Yes, this is one of the more unfortunate unintended consequences of the ACA.
Insurance costs were increasing at a higher rate each year before the ACA was passed or went into effect.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#76This 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?
Libertarians ret-conned Adam Smith's definition of "free market" to mean "complete absence of regulation". And they use this appeal to authority (as well as the naturalistic inevitabilism that originates in evo-psych) as a cudgel to push for the permission of exploitative practices. We are becoming more and more aware as a society of the effects of this campaign, which is heartening, but reactionaries stand at arms to defend their ideological convictions to the death.
For the record, what Adam Smith actually meant by "free" was "everyone is free to participate -- barriers to participation are controlled for and mitigated to the best ability". This requires regulation to discourage and ideally eliminate monopolistic behavior.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#77"Doctors hate this simple trick to reduce ." That's the strange spam message I could never understand. Surely doctors would be delighted at any method to improve health? So I always assumed the "trick" to be quackery with dangerous side effects. After all, why else would "doctors hate it"? Eventually I realised these messages are exclusively US American, the only place on the planet where doctors could plausibly rese…
You are totally wrong.
Quackery exists all over the EU and other socialized systems. The idea that you can fix issues by drinking water or vinegar instead of going through Chemo or surgery has always been an easy sell to the gullible.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#78> “What we’re learning from the hospital data is that insurers are really bad at negotiating” Do the insurers have any incentive to negotiate well? Since their customers are not very price-sensitive (since they aren't marketing directly to patients or doctors), I would imagine they don't have a huge incentive to do anything but apply a markup to whatever prices the hospital tells them it costs.
Private Healthcare is the Classic Agency Problem.
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo. This is why they loved the ACA. Only allowed one scoop of ice cream? Great I'll use an enormous scoop.
That enormous scoop results in 5% or less profit margins. Compare to tech companies’ profit margins.
So? They're insurance companies. Why should they have high profit margins?
Re: How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
#80Very soon we'll have Congressional hearings after oil companies see profits climb 7000 percent over last year, and they'll look sad and do nothing.
I expect much the same from health insurance companies.