Financial lessons from my family's experience with long-term care insurance

Post by nly » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 11:40 PM UTC

silisili wrote: post #74

lvl155 wrote: post #12

Healthcare in the US is broken and they won’t let you fix it because the money is too good. Think about the fact that PBMs, which is there to save and manage on pharma is incentivized to promote drug price inflation. That’s just one “small” piece of this clusterf*k. It’s layers and layers of these convoluted system of incentives. As to OP, the simplest solution is to move out of the US early enough or become “poor” e…

Healthcare is little more than a jobs program at this point. I believe it is the largest industry by employment in every single state now. That compounds the problem even further. Really fixing it would put a double digit percentage of people out of work. I'm all for it, but I can see why politicians are hesitant.

Post by stevenicr » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

llbbdd wrote: post #141

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public system in Hong Kong doesn't really cost anything. It's not that you get costs "waived" if you whine hard enough that you ought to be a charity case (which, by the way, is degrading,) and it's not that costs are passed on to a middleman. Medical treatment is transparently priced and simply inexpensive -- so it's simply not a cause of bankruptcy in Hong Kong, whereas, in the US... > https://worldpopulationre…

Nearly identical with a coat of paint. Every "horror story" I've heard about having to beg with the health system here is tellingly parroted by people who do not have experience with the system. It is the default to get itemized bills when you are insured and the outcome is the same. And again, there is nothing unusual about private care in the US - I pay cash, direct, a small amount monthly, for excellent private ca…

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 6:06 AM UTC

const_cast wrote: post #184

WalterBright wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a coincidence that the industries with the most heavy government involvement - health care, education, and housing - are the most messed up with perverse incentives? Whereas the software industry, with near zero government involvement, has had enormous improvements in function and has pushed the cost to literally zero.

When it comes to healthcare, we didn't used to have so much regulation. And, well, it sucked. People died, black people got injected with radiation, and we experimented on humans. Ultimately, I don't want poor people to just... die. Because that's bad. So we need some sort of guarantees. Or, we don't: in which case, I hope you're content scraping bodies off the freeway for free. Someone has to do it if we're not payi…

Post by apwell23 » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #194

apwell23 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i hear this but haven’t seen it in practice or in statistics curious. what kind of statistics would that show up? When i was looking into clinical trials for prostate cancer. almost 80% of experimental cutting edge medicine was in usa. They even have spl k2 visa for International patients to participate.

I suppose it’s semantics but i wouldn’t consider experimental research “medical care”.

Post by bell-cot » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #192

bell-cot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is far broader than health care. Doesn't matter whether your actual "product" is hospital wards, sheet steel, romance novels, or mowed lawns - if your sector of the economy is not structured to have draconian penalties for bloated management/bureaucracy/overhead, then it will quickly develop ever-worsening bloat. Because it's always quicker & easier to scale up the desks & paperwork. And guess who makes…

Seems like large tech companies never have a shortage of management. Between the matrix style organizational structure and the many layers (project manager, program manager, director, VP, senior VP, BU president, etc…), I would love to know what, if anything, the higher levels actually DO.