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You are too weak, cowardly and divided to stop it. That’s why. Organize, grow a pair and empower each other. You must fight as a group or you will continue to be oppressed and exploited.
and manipulated to fight against each other, against your own interests
Capitalism is basically about making as much money as possible with as few products/services as possible. Health insurance is one of the best ways to achieve that.
ah that western bias again…
You forgot the most important part of capitalism which is exploiting labor.
waiting for a medical group to bypass them and collect premiums directly. if only to end insurance paperwork costs. it is a drag on everyone’s bottom line. aside from price distortions.
A couple of my doctors did that before I left the US in 2021. They stopped accepting insurance and started charging a monthly “membership fee” that would cover a certain number of visits per year.
My parents are part of a clinic exactly like this. I legit thought it might be a scam at first because “how have insurance companies not shut this down?”
I’ve seen it with dentists, they have a membership plan that covers cleanings and certain things which can be useful and affordable if you don’t have access to affordable dental insurance.
It sorta works for kaiser - they administer the insurance and the hospitals. Very convenient for people who both have the insurance and access to their facilities.
Nowhere near as good as a single payer system of course.
I don’t love Kaiser - the prices still suck. But they sometimes suck less, and their system is far more streamlined than I’ve had with other insurance providers. Still ridiculous to be trapped in a system with no control over or transparency into costs.
It would convert nicely enough to a single payer. Granted costs might suck but if they were just absorbed into the system, I wouldn’t really care. I could at least believe they are trying to be efficient. As it is, I’m left believing I get charged as much as they think they can get away with. And wth else am I going to do? Kaiser is much cheaper than my employer’s other option (there are literally 2), and I’ve had the other before. It just sucks (slightly) differently.
Horrible place for a conflict of interest
conflict with insurance interest in taking your money. nurse i know spends 2 hours of insurance documentation for every hour on actual nursing.
I’m not claiming that’s a good thing but I’m fine with my medical provider being incented to provide proper care and to get everything they deserve from my insurance. I would not be fine with them being incented to provide only the care I can afford right now or being incented to maximize how much I’m stuck paying
the calculation i try to do. total insurance payments for a year minus healthcare received equals profits wasted building bigger office buildings and yachts for insurance execs. i’ll bet you a hundred dollars a month your house won’t burn down. or the extended car warranty scams are also same deal. house always wins because people don’t have common sense to save money for ‘rainy days’. schools don’t teach basic finance.
it would be known as usury in an earlier period, say, 13th century Italy
iirc, usery is a sin. says so in the manual
Please don‘t extrapolate from the US healthcare system to insurances in general. Insurances collect money from many so in the case something happens to an individual that individual doesn‘t need take the full financial loss. This makes a lot of sense, because it would very inefficient if everyone would save money in order to pay for a potential cancer treatment. Cancer is rare, but in aggregate it is just small amount each month.
The job of the insurance is to define that monthly amount (which is not trivial to do), collect it, store it and eventually pay it out.
On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.
That is the job of the government. Everyone needs healthcare to one degree or another. If we’re all going to be pooling money anyway it shouldn’t be filtered through a for-profit system first.
On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.
No I can’t. Everything is too expensive because insurance being involved has inflated the costs.
I believe the main problem in the US is the focus on shareholder value. Some people invest into shares of healthcare companies to turn a profit. That is just insane. In Germany (which‘s healthcare system is not perfect) there are many private health insurance companies, but there are not allowed to make a profit (or pay out dividends to shareholders, because there aren‘t any). If there are profits they need to be reinvested into the system. It leads to much better outcomes in my opinion.
If we’re all going to be pooling money anyway it shouldn’t be filtered through a for-profit system first.
Not to sound like someone who wants a small government, but instead paying money to shareholders you can also pay tons and tons of government workers. In Germany when you work for the government you can‘t get fired which leads to a lot of overcapacity. In the tax department it is very often the case that there is only work for less than half a day. A friend of mine actually quit their (very safe) job there, because they couldn‘t stand being bored half a day and being mocked for working too fast.
Again I believe everything is better than the system in the US, but there is some nuance to the alternatives.
The cost of insurance goes down the larger the pool of people. The largest pool in a country is everyone, so like utilities it becomes a natural monopoly.
Natural monopolies should be the purview of the government as they allow for abuse.
You would think that. But most decent sized companies self insure. That means they figure out how much to hold in savings to cover potential costs. They probably pay someone for that number. The premium is just to pay the insurance company to manage billing. It is basically an administrative fee. That puts them in the position that employers will choose the insurance company that cost them the least, mainly by denying claims. It’s a system designed to extract as much money as possible from the people and pass it on to the largest shareholders (the board of directors).
Anything critical to the life of an individual citizen, like health and home insurance, should be publicly run. It just doesn’t make sense for a private company to manage that because their profit motive is in direct opposition to the individual (i.e. they must fight claims and inflate premiums to increase revenue).
The state loses money anyway if the person is homeless or destitute so they might as well pay out. Yes there are still agents to manage funds and adjust claims and set rates but they’re now operating as impartial public servants instead of antagonists.
It’s all a scam and if it doesn’t feel like that yet just you wait!
I just bought a new car. Been driving over twenty years, not a single accident or ticket ever in my life. It was a fucking Toyota Corolla. THEY TRIED TO CHARGE ME MORE A MONTH FOR INSURANCE THAN THE FUCKING CAR PAYMENT!
I was on the phone and I said to geico, you think you deserve a car and a half every fucking month to insure my one car? They told me I would never find a lower rapt that’s what everyone is going to be paying soon.
I found a lower rate… like 10% of what they quoted. Fucking con artists. Every single person that works in insurance should know they are the enemy.
I‘ve heard that car insurance is too expensive in the US, but keep in mind that you are usually not insuring your own car, but everyone else‘s, so if you are causing an accidents the other party can buy a new car for example. An old car (due to the lack of safety systems) is often more likely to end up in car crash than a newer one. In Germany (where insurance prices are much saner) this applies as well. You either get an expensive car and pay less for insurance or an old one and pay more. Also in Germany fees are pooled by model, so if your car is used by a lot young people (who get into accidents more) you also pay more. The good thing is that you can inform yourself about it before you buy a car to factor it into a buying decision from the start.
Sounds like communism to me, son.
Now imagine a country where there is public healthcare, but it is blasted and underpaid so often by crony politicians because “healthcare” companies AND medics have a large pool of crony politicians to pay
Now imagine the lesser of two evils.
I was just asking people to imagine Brazil :P
- You only say that because you live in Brazil and think the problems you list must be unique.
- You were making a cheeky stab at public healthcare, so I made a cheeky stab back.
- I don’t think nor implied the problems are unique
- I made a stab at what it is like to have public healthcare while there is a profit driven “health industry” running parallel
And the UK and Canada. Maybe not as bad as Brazil, but the NHS is Britain is being eroded every single day.
This is why even the best welfare states are not good enough. The greed of the rich and the bendy spines of politicians will slowly chip away at the systems and privatize them.
When the US was having actual discussions of single-payer health care (i.e. the “public option” during Obama’s first term), one major argument against it was “do you really want the government between you and your doctor?!”
Even though insurance companies are literally already between you and your doctor, and they exist purely to extract money from that interaction.
It’s never made sense.
You forgot that Clinton tried as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993
I don’t trust the government, but I trust them a hell of a lot more than insurance companies of all people
I don’t want anyone between me and my doctor. Doctors should be deciding what care I require and billing the govt for it. If the government thinks something fishy is going on, they can audit them after the fact. I need not be involved. As it stands I don’t go to the doctor at all because I’m worried they’ll do some test or something that wasn’t actually approved by my insurance and I’ll get slapped with a bill for 1000s of dollars.
Just as an aside, often the bill you first receive from stuff like that is the fake price they bill insurance for, so the insurance company can “negotiate” a better deal.
If you get a bill like this and insurance denies the claim, you can often call the billing department and get a significant reduction.
I knew someone who racked up like $250k in denied claims from cancer treatment. They went to the hospital to work out a payment plan, and the billing department was so surprised someone actually wanted to pay their bill they dropped it to $2500.
Obviously it’s still fucked that you have to do it, but the price can often be lower than the sticker price.
You can also call your doctor to ask what tests they’re going to run and which lab they use, then call your insurance to verify coverage. Or if the testing is done in house the office staff can check for you.
I don’t care. I’m not engaging with that system unless I think I’m dying. Even then I’ll probably try and sleep whatever it is off first and die anyway. At least my bank account will be intact to leave to my family.
I’m pretty sure the ACA included at least some protection against that, although I don’t know if the current administration repealed that
The old arguments were “Look how long they (the socialists) wait to get appointments and get seen!” Yep, we’re there now. I have insurance, I still pay a bunch, and seeing specialists is a luxury at this point. If I have an issue, I don’t even consider calling specialists, because I know it’s weeks til I can get in.
Weeks lol, try months to years round these parts
during Obama’s first term
Lol this was just about the first thing Clinton tried to get done in 1993. It’s one of the things that led to the creation of Fox News.
And then the same party decided to get the government in there too anyways
Ahaha that’s a good point. Tbh despite the nickname “Obamacare” it had slipped my mind that the ACA was the bastardized, castrated version of that whole thing.
They chopped it down to Romneycare
It’s never made sense.
It makes perfect sense for the americans who have been conditioned for literal decades to react certain ways to certain things, while being kept ignorant of nice things that exist in the rest of the world.
For instance:
Government-run anything? It is mathematically and physically impossible for it to benefit society. It will, without fail, become a corrupt dumpster fire that furthers evil in our world.
Market-based solution that leans heavily on “personal responsibility?” Well that’s just great I tells ya! It lobs like the best, kindest, and most Christlike solution is to do nothing and let them fend for themselves! They will be stronger for it and will thank us!
lmao cnews mentioned. i feel this paper isnt based on a lot of evidence rather than vibe and wishfull thinking
I think you might be in the wrong thread with this comment.
Health insurance is a decent solution to no universal healthcare…on paper. But the way the US executed it is poor
Health insurance is rent on your life. Healthcare should be provided by your government through taxes. It is the best interest of everyone to do it that way. That isn’t insurance. That’s just healthcare.
I agree with you. But I think you missed the point of my comment.
Yep! Japan (only other country I have experience with) has a government run health insurance. Since the interests aren’t profit, the prices remain reasonable even without it
It’s wild how much this contrasts with Australia’s Medicare, like here you can literally just walk into the ER with any issue, show them your Medicare card and get your entire treatment covered for free unless you need any private healthcare, which even then there are rebates and private healthcare competes with public so it’s also moderately affordable.
There were 2 instances where my dad needed to be in hospital for multiple days at a time, once for a broken wrist after slipping at the boat ramp after a fishing trip, and the other was a stingray attack on his leg at that same boat ramp. Both instances didn’t require a single cent exchanged, we just walked in and described the issue, and boom, after a few days he was treated to the extent he could go home and not really worry at all anymore.
Your dad should stay away from that boat ramp…
I vote it be burnt.
Boat Ramps are typically concrete. And partially submerged. Good luck!
This is unironically Nixon’s fault.
It’s also unironically Reagan’s fault, as well as both Clinton and FDR.
Prior to FDR doctors and healthcare were run completely not for profit, and part of The New Deal included privatizing hospitals. Nixon did insurance. Reagan and Clinton mostly just took the government further out of healthcare by removing regulations.
Can you point me in a direction for a source of the new deal hospital privatization aspect please?
I’m unfamiliar and want to lean more.
Looking into it, it seems to have been Truman, not FDR, though FDR may have helped create the bill. You’re looking for the healthcare reform act of 1945. I just remember my nurse grandmother going on multiple tirades about the privatization of healthcare starting around then, and healthcare in general being slowly suffocated by admins ever since. She didn’t live long enough to give me her opinions on the ACA.
Thanks. Yeah, I didn’t want to come off as a know it all umm actually guy so I figured I could be wrong and just ask for a source.
I had done my own search too but again, everyone is fallible so better to just ask.
Also I know it means nothing from some rando on the interwebs but good on ya for correcting yourself. In today’s age and all that…hope you’re as well as you can be. Take care! (Goes to look further into Truman’s war criminal ass lol)
Edit: it appears Truman actually tried to make a national health insurance act happen and was defeated by anti-communist sentiments, the American Medical Association, and republicans fear mongering and “they’re gonna raise your taxes!!!” rhetoric. It would have been a part of the social security expansion but alas, congress is corrupt and Americans are gullible (being generous).
Private nonprofit hospitals aren’t even that bad. Its private insurance thats the real problem
I attended an AI/ML training course provided by one of the major cloud providers (it was actually the first one they ever did). In the class were several private hospital executives.
All of them were absolutely giddy about the prospect of using AI to deny care to unprofitable patients.
You are the product
You dead or without any money left, or both is the product.
… gatekeeping is what they get paid for.
Look at finance! They don’t make anything of actual value, they just bet what’s going to happen to the people that do
“You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.”
If they did that, then they’d be contributing useful information about which ideas are good. But they don’t even do that anymore; the finance game has been rigged since the bailouts started.
Health insurers don’t contribute information. You don’t need to know what your odds of getting sick are because you’re going to want treatment either way. A choice where the alternative is death isn’t a choice.
Isn’t that investing though? Or is that entirely different?
Companies can do things without investors, but investors can’t do anything without companies.
If I invest in stock on my toilet at home I’m technically helping the company financially, but I’m not actually developing or making things of real economic value. I’m just betting they will and that their numbers will go up.
Oh shit I have a toilet too how do I invest
You make periodic deposits
No way I’m doing that right now
Remember pryimid schemes are illegal. Because they dont sell a product.
They’re not illegal because they don’t sell a product, they’re illegal because they’re impossible to maintain mathematically.
It’s not far off from a Ponzi scheme, honestly. A few people are going to make a lot of money early on and everybody else is going to get rapidly diminishing returns to nothing.
Here in Argentina that we have free healthcare, insurance is a signal of wealth so you get attended in the private hospital away from the common folk. And even in the private hospital everything is relatively cheap because they have to compete with the free option.
