81–90 of 370 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It does if it results in them being able to sell policies at lower premiums than their competitors and hence earn more customers. > 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?
Because switching to a different provider can be a huge pain in the ass to your employees, whose multi-year treatments/doctors/etc may suddenly become out of network?
And it's probably not worth doing unless the cost delta is truly staggering?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The accusation here isn't that they are skimming a disproportionate amount, it's that they aren't doing their job, which is to put downwards pressure on provider prices.
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…
Next step is pharmacies. Find out which step in the chain is overpricing. The manufacturers, PBMs or local pharmacies, etc.
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…
> It's not just the insurers themselves, but the whole system. Burn it all down. Painstakingly, methodically, improve it, taking care at each step that you're making it better. :)
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?
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 t…
Earlier 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does if it results in them being able to sell policies at lower premiums than their competitors and hence earn more customers. > 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?
> It is a huge expense, so why would we not shop around? Because switching to a different provider can be a huge pain in the ass to your employees, whose multi-year treatments/doctors/etc may suddenly become out of network? And it's probably not worth doing unless the cost delta is truly staggering?
"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…
Being a doctor is a business just like any other. And just like any other business, some operate ethically while others don't.