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Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

vienna.earth

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Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#21

Post by hutzlibu »

jbarrow wrote: post #2

This explains a lot; I’ve been thinking for years (ever since being diagnosed with a chronic health condition) about writing an essay likening the American insurance system to Kafka’s _The Trial_. The bureaucracy is absolutely soul-crushing, and has left me in tears on multiple occasions. While nearly no individual person you deal with is at fault or malicious, the whole experience ends up being something I wouldn’t…

Yeah, it is probably helpful to be aware, that quite often the person you are complaining to, knows the flaws of the system way better than you, but is equally powerless to change anything about it.

But sometimes they can do something that helps you, so it often helps to not treat them like they are personally responsible for everything, just because they work there.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#22

Post by HideousKojima »

DennisP wrote: post #7
HideousKojima wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. Whoah now, don't talk about my dad like that! In all seriousness though, my dad said that all the places he worked at over the years generally accepted over 99% of the claims they received. My dad did develop a visceral hatred for chiropractors over the course of his career though.

I have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.

Because of the countless times he had to deal with claimants going to the chiropractor and the chiropractor claiming that in order to treat their injury they need to come in three times a week for the next 20 years. I exaggerate but there are plenty of dishonest chiropractors trying to milk everything they can out of worker's comp insurance, even if it is of little to no benefit to the patient.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#24

Post by version_five »

jbarrow wrote: post #2

This explains a lot; I’ve been thinking for years (ever since being diagnosed with a chronic health condition) about writing an essay likening the American insurance system to Kafka’s _The Trial_. The bureaucracy is absolutely soul-crushing, and has left me in tears on multiple occasions. While nearly no individual person you deal with is at fault or malicious, the whole experience ends up being something I wouldn’t…

Yes, it's important to remember that Kafka didn't invent "Kafkaesque" - it's literally just an artistic description of bureaucracy. So when people talk about Kafkaesque interactions with government or large companies, that adjective is generally redundant.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#25

Post by qazpot »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #23

Not even Kafka got to write full time. Even the famous artists had to work a job and yet we still see posts every day about how greedy the art industries are

Kafka was not a famous writer at all or got rich due to his writing.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#26

Post by analog31 »

gnu8 wrote: post #13
DennisP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.

Some Chiropractors and their patients are under the impression that actual diseases and injuries can be cured by performing the manual adjustments of the body, which leads to people dying of untreated cancer, or orthopedic injuries being aggravated instead of treated properly. Not to say that there aren’t good Chiropractors who recognize their limits, but they all tend to get painted with the same brush.

For my neighbor when I was growing up, it was diabetes.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#27

Post by analog31 »

woooooo wrote: post #8
pstuart wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the AMA does constrain the number of doctors in the US so that supply and demand part is on them.

Talk to any doctor about the priorities of the MBA-holding decision-makers at their hospitals.

When each one accuses someone else of gouging us, assume that they're all gouging us.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#28

Post by woooooo »

analog31 wrote: post #27
woooooo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to any doctor about the priorities of the MBA-holding decision-makers at their hospitals.

When each one accuses someone else of gouging us, assume that they're all gouging us.

Doctors are paid the same as software engineers for a job that is like 10x as hard.

MBA hospital administrators have greed as their official main job responsibility.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#29

Post by alan-crowe »

fsloth wrote: post #14
pstuart wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the AMA does constrain the number of doctors in the US so that supply and demand part is on them.

Quite many countries limit the supply of doctors with less expensive health schemes.

In the UK the government both limits the supply of doctors and manages a fairly cheap National Health Service. How? It is rationed by queuing and achieves poor medical outcomes.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#30

Post by qwytw »

profile53 wrote: post #19
twoodfin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance the US has of achieving the cost savings of other industrialized nations depends crucially on doctors making a lot less. https://www.beckersasc.com/benchmarking/how-physician-pay-in...

IIRC about 40 percent of all medical expenses are administrative costs and about 20 percent is drug costs. Improving those could drop healthcare costs by nearly half, without lowering healthcare salaries. To lower medical salaries, we need to address (a) the AMA acting as a cartel, (b) residency slots being paid for by Medicare and being limited, and (c) crippling student debt problems. As an example, nurse practitio…

> Improving those could drop healthcare costs by nearly half

Wouldn't you have to decrease spending on admin and drugs up to 10x which would likely bring US well below the costs in most/all other rich c

I'm not sure how feasible it would be to reduce admin and drug costs by almost 10x?

Edit: to be fair 10x might not that far-fetched as I might have thought, admin costs are massively higher than anywhere else:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264127/per-capita-healt...

I'd assume the way they measure it might differ significantly between some countries. Also ~1000 is just 10% of per capita spending in the US.

If we look at drugs:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266141/pharmaceutical-sp...

The gap is quite a bit smaller. Also in total drugs+admin seem to be about 25% or so?

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