UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000% • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by throwway120385 » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:04 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #31

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but we can't talk about "over" without talking about where the line is.

Fundamentally, you have a pretty good point here, since the system we have has two halves that are fundamentally at odds: One part "free market -- maximize your profits as much as you can and get rewarded by a skyrocketing share price!" And one part, unspoken except in the PR BS put out by the insurance companies, "Try to improve the health of patients and have them not die!" The only way the two can coexist at all i…

It ceased to be a free market when we enshrined employer-provided plans into the law. If it were more like auto insurance where I can fire my insurance company and receive a pro-rated refund or renegotiate coverage in the middle of the year then it would be more free. But my employer negotiates for me on my behalf, and their needs are often at odds with my needs. And the whole "open enrollment" period thing creates a situation where the insurance company gets to be absolutely terrible for an entire year and there's no recourse. And especially there's no recourse if my employer is generally satisfied, because my alternative is to take a massive pay cut to get good coverage.

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

#52

Post by lenerdenator » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:04 PM UTC

arrty88 wrote: post #14

Some day our regulators at the fda, ftc, doj, etc should clean house and get some folks who can actually go after these greedy companies. Today they don’t because of the revolving door system.

They're not going to for at least the next four years.

"What is good for the shareholders is good for society" will be the order of the day.

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

#53

Post by baq » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#54

Post by throwway120385 » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #46

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…

Insurance isn't a good industry to "get insanely rich". It doesn't have high profit margins. For one thing, the ACA mandates that insurance companies can't keep profits past a certain point. My sense is that people expect too much from their health insurance. Subconsciously, we expect to experience no pain and live forever. When this inevitably doesn't happen, we blame insurance companies for not bankrolling infinite…

Clearly with Private Equity entering healthcare this is patently false.

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

#55

Post by pyrale » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

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

They're totally wrong. War is what funds innovations.

Imagine all the innovation we're missing on every day a country isn't being invaded!

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

#56

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

segfaltnh wrote: post #47

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't particularly care if health insurance is public or private. DIRECT health care labor costs (doctor's, nurses, etc) are ~40-60% of TOTAL healthcare spending. Smart people try to figure out ways to make our system better every day. If there was a silver bullet, we'd have already taken it. Health insurance profits are ~1.2% of total health care spending, the cost of running it is approximately ~4% more. It's alw…

Honest question as someone who prefers single payer but acknowledged it's not a silver bullet: how much of the costs are nurses and doctors vs. admin? It seems to me there's a lot of overhead in passing the bills around to get paid. I just had my appendix out last year and got billed 8 times by 8 different firms, each with payment portals, call centers, billing providers, etc. I assume there's a lot of inefficiency i…

~40-60% is direct healthcare - not including admin or insurance labor costs.

Pharmaceuticals is ~9%.

Health insurance profits are 1.2%.

Other profits are x%.

Medical equipment, devices, hospital rents, etc are y%.

Most of the remainder is admin & insurance costs - only about ~2% of which is private health insurance operating costs (largely labor).

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

#57

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by realce » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #46

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…

Insurance isn't a good industry to "get insanely rich". It doesn't have high profit margins. For one thing, the ACA mandates that insurance companies can't keep profits past a certain point. My sense is that people expect too much from their health insurance. Subconsciously, we expect to experience no pain and live forever. When this inevitably doesn't happen, we blame insurance companies for not bankrolling infinite…

The article is about insurance company malfeasance, but this boils it down to mis-aligned consumer expectations about living forever in total bliss. That feels like a strange disconnect.

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

#59

Post by pyrale » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #29

acchow wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Competition is what drives innovation. There are many ways to chase profits without innovating.

Xerox parc is a good counter-example.

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

#60

Post by baq » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

NickC25 wrote: post #42

daveguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit motives for medical / biotech research, yes. What innovations have insurance companies made in the last 100 years besides to squeeze out more profit?

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.

I guess they have their own labs, you just never learn about their failed experiments.