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UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

fortune.com

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Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#111

Post by cibyr »

segfaltnh wrote: post #41
brightball wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody defend them? I’ve been on the selection side as an employer and several others will probably echo what I’m about to say. Virtually every insurance provider is going up 15-20% / year to the point that it’s completely unsustainable. United was quoted to me as almost 20% lower than current rate for our provider (before they are about to go up 20%). On premium alone they will save some people close to $500 /…

I feel people defend them by opposing any other approach to solving this. Politicians in particular say things like "preserving customer choice", which I think just means having the ability to select among all the terrible insurance companies who will treat you poorly.

Most people don't even get the ability to select among all the terrible insurance companies - their employer chooses for them!

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#112

Post by gruez »

this_weekend wrote: post #70
brightball wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody defend them? I’ve been on the selection side as an employer and several others will probably echo what I’m about to say. Virtually every insurance provider is going up 15-20% / year to the point that it’s completely unsustainable. United was quoted to me as almost 20% lower than current rate for our provider (before they are about to go up 20%). On premium alone they will save some people close to $500 /…

[flagged]

>but the greater public ultimately felt he went too easy on them.

Not sure what exactly is meant by that, but most people did not think the killing was acceptable.

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killi...

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#113

Post by verisimi »

tptacek wrote: post #97
brightball wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody defend them? I’ve been on the selection side as an employer and several others will probably echo what I’m about to say. Virtually every insurance provider is going up 15-20% / year to the point that it’s completely unsustainable. United was quoted to me as almost 20% lower than current rate for our provider (before they are about to go up 20%). On premium alone they will save some people close to $500 /…

Sure, I'll defend them, conceptually at least. I think most actors in this system are in some sense corrupt, and I don't think insurers are the most corrupt. Pull up the 2022 National Health Expenditure table, "National Health Expenditures by Type of Expenditure and Program: Calendar Year 2022" and look at combined hospital and physician expenses compared to insurer expenses; it's pretty black-and-white.

> I don't think insurers are the most corrupt

Lol, nice defence

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#114

Post by nozzlegear »

amelius wrote: post #91
nozzlegear wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to go to the mat for Big Pharma, but I'm certain that they do a lot more than slapping a stupid name on the research right at the end of the pipeline. Most universities can't fund sustained, large or diverse clinical trials, for instance; they also can't generally do the long-term post-market research/surveillance once a drug has been released.

So the only contribution of Big Pharma is that they take the risk, collect the funding and do some administrative stuff. It sounds to me like we can get rid of this middle man with some well managed governmental institutions.

> So the only contribution of Big Pharma is that they take the risk

That seems to me like the big thing you're kind of glossing over. Like I said, I don't really want to go to the mat for them, but I'm sure there's plenty of risks Big Pharma corps have taken buying up research they thought would pay off and then failed to bring to market.

Maybe it'd be better to have governments buying the research and bringing it to market, but as this subthread hints at, profit is one of the big motivations for researchers to do what they do. Hopefully the government would still be paying big bucks for the research, and hopefully the taxpayers wouldn't vote in someone who wants to gut whatever arm of the government is responsible for that after enough failed purchases.

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#115

Post by outworlder »

wlesieutre wrote: post #86
segfaltnh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel people defend them by opposing any other approach to solving this. Politicians in particular say things like "preserving customer choice", which I think just means having the ability to select among all the terrible insurance companies who will treat you poorly.

And shouting about "death panels" in public healthcare systems, as if the private insurance companies don't have people whose whole job is denying as many claims as possible

They will also complain about waiting times - as if you don't wait with private insurance companies.

That is after you convince them that your procedure or exam is even needed, which can be a long protracted fight in itself.

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#116

Post by gedpeck »

tptacek wrote: post #97
brightball wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody defend them? I’ve been on the selection side as an employer and several others will probably echo what I’m about to say. Virtually every insurance provider is going up 15-20% / year to the point that it’s completely unsustainable. United was quoted to me as almost 20% lower than current rate for our provider (before they are about to go up 20%). On premium alone they will save some people close to $500 /…

Sure, I'll defend them, conceptually at least. I think most actors in this system are in some sense corrupt, and I don't think insurers are the most corrupt. Pull up the 2022 National Health Expenditure table, "National Health Expenditures by Type of Expenditure and Program: Calendar Year 2022" and look at combined hospital and physician expenses compared to insurer expenses; it's pretty black-and-white.

One should not profit from denying care. All health systems ration care. Doing so in a way that people profit from denying care is immoral.

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#118

Post by oneplane »

acchow wrote: post #19
porcoda wrote: post #7

Nothing is shocking about the insurance industry anymore since they’ve been pulling this kind of thing for years. To me the most shocking thing is the people who defend them. I understand the drive to make money and build huge businesses: what confuses me is that we treat human health the same as things that don’t directly impact the health of people. It seems to me that there are endless opportunities to get insanel…

How do you respond to people that say the profit motive is what drives innovation, and in the long term we’d rather have better, novel treatments sooner

By informing them that most of that is funded by taxes and students doing all the work, not corporations and not based on their revenue. If anything, they have an incentive not to make better treatments because better often means less profitable.

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#119

Post by gruez »

llamaimperative wrote: post #77
NickC25 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that research is primarily done in university labs, mind you. On the taxpayer dime. Somehow the research escapes a lab and Pfizer manages to put some stupid name on it and reaps billions in profit.

There should be a method + requirement to pay royalties back to public funding for basic research, but pharmaceutical companies really bear 99% of the risk and complexity of bringing a drug to market. It's not all that expensive to find molecules that might do something useful, it's obscenely expensive and risky to prove one does something useful.

>There should be a method + requirement to pay royalties back to public funding for basic research,

You mean the patent system? The university of california holds patents on CRISPR, for instance.

Re: UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

#120

Post by lnxg33k1 »

tredre3 wrote: post #92
baq wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security. The US’s primary concern is mark to market in pension funds.

> It shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security. You seem to be making a weird connection here, but maybe I misunderstand you. Are you truly suggesting that countries who have socialized health care do so because they've been affected by war on their territory at some point?

Extremists came from misery, and misery is what drives united states today
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