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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%

#201

Post by theteapot »

landryraccoon wrote: post #28
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #4

https://archive.ph/cg4we I do not like UnitedHealth, I do not like our existing crop of health insurance executives, and I might even be viscerally glad at some level that the UnitedHealth CEO was killed in a world where justice clearly takes a back seat to greed, but I wish the headline didn't say "overcharged", because there's no established amount of markup that is the correct amount of markup other than what peop…

I take issue with the claim that in order to say something is too expensive that you must be able to precisely propose an alternative price. I have no idea what the correct margin for essential cancer drugs is. I don’t think it should be a 10x markup. Intuitively, it seems that there’s something wrong with price gouging dying cancer patients. If you have an argument why my intuition is wrong, please share it.

> I take issue with the claim that in order to say something is too expensive that you must be able to precisely propose an alternative price.

If you want to be quantitative of course you do. How hard is it? Margin of error is allowed. If you want to be qualitative, vague and wishy washy, that has its place too, but at some point someone is going to ask for a quantitative assertion, otherwise you get nowhere.

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

#202

Post by ceejayoz »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #167
antisthenes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything above what Medicaid pays for drugs/procedures (and maybe a few % over to account for health insurance salaries) is overcharging. Is that clear enough for you?

The trouble with this cascades as follows: 1) I don't know what Medicaid pays. 2) I don't know that what Medicaid pays is a just price until we define what a just price is on its own merits. Maybe Medicaid pays more than they should. 3) What Medicaid pays could change at any time for any reason unless what Medicaid pays is based itself on some metrics that define otherwise, in which case let's just look at those metr…

1. Unlike private insurance, this is publicly available.

2. If anything, it's a bit stingy. The negotiating power of government (and the predictability of it) helps keep reimbursements down here.

3. I mean, that's how they're set. They analyze how long and how much a particular procedure should take/cost.

4. Sure.

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

#203

Post by gruez »

cluckindan wrote: post #140
gruez wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

”Survey of 1,000 registered voters conducted Dec. 11-13, 2024”

Again, not sure what you're trying to say but given how it's overwhelmingly against "killing was acceptable or somewhat acceptable", it's unlikely that polling error would significantly change the conclusion.

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

#204

Post by tptacek »

ceejayoz wrote: post #185
tptacek wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And billing us 4x more for it than Europeans, and, further: a lot of that work is wasteful and unnecessary (see: spinal fusion surgeries, back imaging). There were more MRI machines in Massachusetts in 2023 than there where in all of Canada .

> And billing us 4x more for it than Europeans In part, because dealing with insurers is immensely costly in staff and time. (Other parts include the immense cost of twelve years of secondary education here; a million bucks in student loans isn't uncommon.) > a lot of that work is wasteful and unnecessary (see: spinal fusion surgeries, back imaging) Which makes the "insurers are there to reduce waste!" argument espec…

Doctors don't make 4x more here than in Germany because of insurance costs.

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

#205

Post by tptacek »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #189
tptacek wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my issue with M4A: it seems clear from the numbers that the problems in our system --- and I think they're grave --- are almost entirely on the provider-side, and Medicare has, if anything, locked us into those cost structures. If anyone's curious why there's a scarcity in physician care hours in the US: Medicare rate limits the number of new doctors allowed into the system every year, through the residency f…

Agree that it's not perfect, but I do feel that we could take 60-80% of the money we're currently spending and fix this and any other issues that come up and get in the way of improved outcomes like the rest of the world does. I don't know why what you're describing happens, but my money would be on some triage that needs to happen due to limited funding since so much of our spending goes into private healthcare solu…

I really just have two things to say on this subthread:

* Medicare would not have 2% overhead if it served 30-year-olds.

* Medicare is in fact the primary constraint on the supply of doctors in the US system.

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

#206

Post by awongh »

Aurornis wrote: post #182
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 haven't seen any defenses of insurance companies lately. In fact, it seems like insurance companies are the only safe target for criticism of US healthcare problems right now. > Virtually every insurance provider is going up 15-20% / year to the point that it’s completely unsustainable. The elephant in the room is that healthcare costs are going up. Even if we waved a magic wand and eliminated health insurance over…

I was shocked to hear from an anesthesiologist friend of mine in Germany that an American salary could be 10x higher.

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

#207

Post by LPisGood »

baggy_trough wrote: post #35
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…

Setting aside human health and agreeing that it should be outside capitalist endeavor would be incredibly damaging to human health. I can hardly imagine any policy that would reduce life years more than that.

Why then do countries with socialized healthcare have linger life expectancy than countries with capitalist-only healthcare system?

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

#208

Post by ceejayoz »

jiggawatts wrote: post #174
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 /…

> $500 / month What the actual f!? That saving is double the total cost of my private health insurance in Australia! This includes the “Medicare levy” tax I pay at the highest rate because I get an above average income. Health insurance cost is something I just don’t think about. My missus reminds me every few years to combine our plans because it might save us AUD 250 per… year. Maybe.

Yeah, it's bad here. My health insurance premium (family of four) went from $3,000 US/month to $3,600/month on Jan 1. That doesn't cover everything, either - there's a deductible, and then there's copays, which means up to $9k/year out of pocket on top of those premiums.

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

#209

Post by gedpeck »

tptacek wrote: post #150
gedpeck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you believe that, you should have a bigger problem with what providers bill, because that's the ultimate origin of the constraints.

I take it then that we agree that for profit health insurance companies profiting from denying care is immoral. That there are other immoral actors is not germane to the discussion.

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

#210

Post by henry_bone »

I wonder a lot about this argument of private health care vs state funded health care. I have libertarian leanings and so would prefer a truly free market, because I would like to believe it would lead to affordable levels of health care for everyone.

But I don't know that it's true. My questions regarding the US system and health insurance: Is it a truly free market or does the state regulate in ways that make it difficult for competition?

In Australia we have heavily subsidized healthcare, but it's not great. If you've got something life threatening then you'll be OK. If it's not life threatening, but just really difficult to live with then you'll wait. Sometimes years. No choice of specialist or hospital either. So many of us get private health insurance of one level or another, in order to have more choice and better, more prompt care.

So, how free is the US system?

Also, here's an X post from a guy called Devon Eriksen on the topic of socialized healthcare and free markets.

[https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1865932424376377833]

PS: Devon wrote a great debut Sci Fi novel called "Theft Of Fire" (Orbital Space #1). It's a great read, with endorsements from John Carmack, "Uncle" Bob Martin and ESR, among others.

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