141–150 of 690 posts
Firey take, but health insurers are not the problem they are made out to be. They're on your team and benefit from lower prices just as much as you do. They don't make any money either, don't argue with me, buy their stocks if you are so convinced and see how that goes over. Health care providers carry immense blame. It's full of passionless people in it for the outsized paychecks, who once inside will just seek what…
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Electric utilities face price caps and there are not electricity shortages. It depends on the level of market failure, but there are not a ton of hospitals to choose from regardless.
There are electricity shortages. https://fortune.com/2025/11/10/nvidia-hometown-santa-clara-c...
Monopolies, in these cases natural monopolies, can in fact exist. Look at the Micro supply and demand curves. As a general rule over those 100 years, there has not been rationing of electricity. There are natural blackouts and today an unplanned surge in demand (as happens in every industry such as chips after Covid), but generally the price regulation did not cause some kind of gas lines.
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What OP said is true. You’re forgetting that health insurers are just one organization in the corporate chart. They often work to own the providers as well to funnel money to parent corporations. So if United is the insurer they’re owned by an umbrella, that umbrella takes 20% or less. However United makes special deals and steers people to providers owned by the Umbrella. So that the Umbrella makes more money as wel…
Digi is correct here. >For example Cigna requires all maintenance medication be purchased through express scripts Important note: Cigna owns Express Scripts. Today the biggest "insurance" companies are actually massive conglomerates that own the clinics, the doctors and the pharmacies. United = Optum. Aetna = CVS + Caremark. Humana = CenterWell. Elevance/Blue Cross/Anthem/Carelon. Centene = Envolve Once a giant like…
> The US spends ~$14,570 per person on healthcare. Japan spends ~$5,790 and has the highest life expectancy in the OECD. That gap is roughly $3 trillion per year. The difference in life expectancy will be influenced by multiple factors and may have more to do with diet and lifestyle than with healthcare. Japan also spends less per capita than the UK, France or Germany. The US spends a lot more than any of those so th…
The US also has GDP per capita of $90k and Japan has a GDP per capita of ~ $35k. Put another way, in both countries a hip replacement surgery is almost exactly 1/8 of someone's per capita GDP.
Lots of people are saying nonsense here. The actual reason commercial insurers pay more is that's the only way to can make more profits. Because of Obamacare requiring 80% of the money they collect to be spent, the insurance companies just get to keep 20%. So insurance companies spend more so they can collect higher premiums. That's how they make more money. Several doctor friends have told me this as well.
-- Charlie Munger
Firey take, but health insurers are not the problem they are made out to be. They're on your team and benefit from lower prices just as much as you do. They don't make any money either, don't argue with me, buy their stocks if you are so convinced and see how that goes over. Health care providers carry immense blame. It's full of passionless people in it for the outsized paychecks, who once inside will just seek what…
Firey take, but health insurers are not the problem they are made out to be. They're on your team and benefit from lower prices just as much as you do. They don't make any money either, don't argue with me, buy their stocks if you are so convinced and see how that goes over. Health care providers carry immense blame. It's full of passionless people in it for the outsized paychecks, who once inside will just seek what…
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Not saying nursing is stress free, or every nurse is bad, but like tech companies in 2021, it's full of directionless people who pushed through the cert program to get paid $50/hr with $100/hr weekend shifts and be disgruntled with you that you are making them do work.
Does anyone here remember how health care was delivered before medicare and medicaid was enacted in 1965? It was not pretty. Prices were low then because it was all private pay and charity. Why do you think so many hospitals are named after saints? The church made a significant contribution to running healthcare. But when the govt got involved in 1965, the MBAs started salivating. Now we have a system that is built a…
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The US also has GDP per capita of $90k and Japan has a GDP per capita of ~ $35k. Put another way, in both countries a hip replacement surgery is almost exactly 1/8 of someone's per capita GDP.
Too bad Walmart greeter isn't making "per capita GDP".
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> ACA enshrined the worst parts of the American healthcare system for years to come before the ACA, insurers could deny coverage for pre-existing conditions people have forgotten how bad things used to be
Why is that inherently bad? Should I be able to buy fire insurance on pre-existing embers?
Obama couldn't change that, so the ACA redesigned the system to work with it. Despite being called insurance, health insurance is no longer really viewed or designed to be any kind of insurance. Instead, it's supposed to be Netflix for healthcare. You pay a flat rate, and then get unlimited healthcare. Obviously, the issue with this is that if you don't need healthcare you can just not sign up for the subscription. So the ACA tried to solve this by requiring everyone to sign up. Once everyone is required to sign up, it's not right to discriminate against preexisting conditions. It may not be an especially good system, but it is coherent.