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A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

blog.turquoise.health

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Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#221

Post by izzydata »

amluto wrote: post #183
efsavage wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a _bad law_* as much as it's an _incomplete law_. I don't know what the complete version looks like, but it would include both customer cost controls and reward innovation-based efficiency gains. Alternatively, some places have taken the approach that these are mutually exclusive and just generally removed profit from the picture entirely by socializing it. * Health care costs were growing out of c…

IMO the most effective consumer cost control is competition. An actual, non-corrupt, free market where customers are not locked in and there are more than just a handful of providers generally results in low prices. We do not have this in healthcare. Providers form cartels - at least in Northern California, this is so bad that the state AG is investigating (not very effectually) [0]. Customers generally can't even te…

Wouldn't a free market eventually lead to all these insurance companies combining into 1-2 even more mega insurance companies until there is no competition again? At least if all their profits are capped there is no reason to merge.

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#222

Post by grumple »

beachy wrote: post #77
ramraj07 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with petabytes of data. A petabyte of text is an insane amount of text. You need a billion X multiplication of basic data. That’s not just combinatrionics, it’s deliberate obfuscation.

4 tables, each with 1k rows and one of them with a 1K text column in it, joined together to give a cartesion product, will give you a petabyte of data. So it doesn't sound impossible (just absurd).

That's a very artificially bloated way of compounding the data in memory with lots of data duplication. From storing the example tables you used, you'd need to store 62.5 million times that to get a petabyte of data. It's an absurd amount of data.

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#223

Post by status_quo69 »

amluto wrote: post #183
efsavage wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a _bad law_* as much as it's an _incomplete law_. I don't know what the complete version looks like, but it would include both customer cost controls and reward innovation-based efficiency gains. Alternatively, some places have taken the approach that these are mutually exclusive and just generally removed profit from the picture entirely by socializing it. * Health care costs were growing out of c…

IMO the most effective consumer cost control is competition. An actual, non-corrupt, free market where customers are not locked in and there are more than just a handful of providers generally results in low prices. We do not have this in healthcare. Providers form cartels - at least in Northern California, this is so bad that the state AG is investigating (not very effectually) [0]. Customers generally can't even te…

We do have this in a way with healthcare.gov, since the marketplace allows consumers to view multiple insurers rather than those tied to their jobs. However these plans are still pricey, I put in some dummy data with a higher than average income (60k) and got plans at 280 per month at the bottom of the barrel. Seems to me like it's a good step in the right direction but the marketplace doesn't have an actual market driving force to reduce prices even with the 11 million plans selected for 2023. Having worked in healthcare billing processing software, this lines up, insurance companies really don't give a shit about reducing prices to compete since consumers at the point of billing are always a captive audience (if you don't have it and you have an emergency, you're fucked)

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#224

Post by paulddraper »

JohnFen wrote: post #208
esaym wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ducks are poisonous, this is why the species needs to be known.

(Sorry, the pedant in me can't resist) If you get a toxin through biting it, it's poisonous. If you get a toxin through being bitten by it, it's venomous.

Interesting, thanks.

Gotta know which ducks to avoid biting vs being bitten by.

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#225

Post by thfuran »

skissane wrote: post #217
thfuran wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we're in a thread about health insurance. That that isn't the primary concern of the WHO is beside the point.

Yes, but the ICD isn’t for health insurance, it is for international standardisation of mortality and morbidity statistics, so they can be compared between countries. That’s its purpose and the reason for its existence The fact that the US chooses to use it for something which was not its originally intended purpose is the fault of the US, not the fault of the ICD. The WHO doesn’t force the US health insurance system…

ICD-10-PCS is produced by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#226

Post by cobertos »

I dove a bit into the data, and the dashboard with an account works much better than the front page search.

Are there any good use cases for this data? It looks like this company (turquoise.health) is already targeting price comparisons ("rate sense"), contract negotiations for people/companies who purchase health care ("clear contracts") and other parts of the value chain. Are there any other parts of the value chain left? I can't think of anything...

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#227

Post by cobertos »

Buttons840 wrote: post #102

Companies are going to grow around this data. An entire industry might grow around this data, and it will be an industry that I support every time I pay an insanely high insurance premium or medical bill. 15% of our workers are in the medical system [0], and this doesn't even include the surrounding insurance industries or pharma industries (I think). Someone has to pay all these people, and that someone is me when I…

What sort of company could you start around this data?

It looks like this parent company (turquoise.health) is already targeting price comparisons ("rate sense"), contract negotiations for people/companies who purchase health care ("clear contracts") and other parts of the value chain. Are there any other parts of the value chain left? I can't think of anything...

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#228

Post by willcipriano »

nradov wrote: post #211
willcipriano wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody actually wants to control costs. From doctors to hospitals to insurance companies, everyone but consumers benefit from high prices.

Employers and other group buyers want to control costs.

They are consumers

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#229

Post by webnrrd2k »

marvin wrote: post #214
petsfed wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent a lot time around people doing statistics for environmental science, especially regulatory compliance around accidentally killing birds and bats. The unfortunate reality for the statisticians is that every tech thinks they're Henry David Thoreau or something. Like, nobody cares if it was a particular large exemplar of a given species, or that it had magnificent plummage, just write down the species of the…

What if it was a lemur, though? Bet they don't have a code for that.

According to Google, it's: 2023 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code W55.81XA Bitten by other mammals, initial encounter

Re: A petabyte of health insurance prices per month

#230

Post by peteradio »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #106
Sevii wrote: post #49

There is so much data because of insurance. Insurers are in the business of declining claims. They have discovered that the best way to decline claims is to create byzantine rules while offloading all the work to comply with those rules to healthcare providers. The only way to fix it at this point is to nationalize the system or to exclude all routine care from the insurance system. Something like a legal ban on dedu…

Per federal law (ACA), health insurers in the US are required to spend 80% to 85% of revenues on healthcare expenses. Their profit margins are 2% to 6%. Therefore, the higher the revenue, the higher the profit. Where is the incentive to deny legitimate claims?

Forget denying claims! Why did I pay 1200 to get my family tested for strep... After insurance?
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