Accurate. They are literally middle men taking a cut without offering anything to the process. Switch to single payer, dump the middlemen, and have our taxes pay for essential services (keeping us alive and healthy). Seems simple enough but…
> Switch to single payer, dump the middlemen, and have our taxes pay for essential services (keeping us alive and healthy). Seems simple enough but… ... But you still have group A (patients) paying group B (doctors) with group C's (taxpayers', or currently insurers'/policyholders') money.
Uh, group A and group C are the same. We would see much more preventative care if such care was free at time of service.
all of insurance and all of healthcare is "other people's money" :) it just depends where other people's money is going. this is amazing thing to me as European living in the United States, people want Gov to spend money for education or healthcare or ... COMMUNISM!! but corporate subsidies and 984 trillion dollars to the department of offense - oh RIGHT ON - let me get another gig job to pay more to that :)
The somewhat obvious thing you seem to be missing there is that the money isn’t being extracted by force.
Not force, just the veiled threat that if you don't pay you won't have healthcare.
Everyone will require healthcare at some point, and at the points where you need the most you can't go do some window shopping and price comparison. Why make it more difficult, cumbersome, expensive, and bureaucratic? Ideologues can be rather illogical.
all of insurance and all of healthcare is "other people's money" :) it just depends where other people's money is going. this is amazing thing to me as European living in the United States, people want Gov to spend money for education or healthcare or ... COMMUNISM!! but corporate subsidies and 984 trillion dollars to the department of offense - oh RIGHT ON - let me get another gig job to pay more to that :)
The somewhat obvious thing you seem to be missing there is that the money isn’t being extracted by force.
try to not pay your taxes and see if it will be extracted by force :)
People have built a frustrating system for themselves with a century of complicated and messy political decisions (and resulting regulations). They don't have the will or attention span required to solve the various problems via the slow moving & gridlocked political system. So, they take out their frustration on the highest profile participants in the system. Solutions? I'm worried that there aren't solutions. There…
There is really basic stuff that we're going to have to do no matter what that doesn't involve restructuring the system, like drastically increasing the number of practicing physicians, which is capped by (you guessed) Medicare, which sponsors residencies. But all we can talk about is payer structure because of a complete fixation on insurance companies as singular villains.
Heyyy, we're starting to talk solutions after all. Good stuff. What do you think is UHG's and its executives' role in supporting or opposing the policies and politicians who could enact these fixes? I didn't verify this, but I'm going to go out on a tiny limb and guess that UHG and its execs pay for legislative seats to be filled by Republicans. Republicans famously want to reduce Medicare funding. Do you think lowered Medicare funding would result in more or fewer Medicare-funded residency positions? Certainly there's more at play in elections than UHG itself, but I'm wondering which side of the solution they're on.
They are an integral part of the mess we're in, and they have a vested interest in the status quo. Otherwise, I agree with you.
I'm certainly not going to valorize insurers, but I find it deeply frustrating the providers are getting a pass here. You can see it on this thread, where there are commenters expressing surprise that I'd even suggest providers are the primary beneficiaries of the current system.
Yes, I see what you mean about the comments elsewhere on this thread/page. For what it's worth, I was only trying to avoid going off-topic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regarding providers overcharging, the following article by Atul Gawande (from 15 years ago!) had a big impact on me -- it agrees with you:
Genuine question: What is so difficult about healthcare in the USA?
European countries solutions range from free to government subsidised (for those who can't afford it). The free ones vary in quality, but systems where you pay unless you can't work pretty well, and the quality is very high.
Why is this such an issue in the USA? Is it purely a "powerful people with vested interests" thing?