You must log in or # to comment.
You are the product
You dead or without any money left, or both is the product.
… gatekeeping is what they get paid for.
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.
It probably started with healthcare being expensive.
Insurance is why it got expensive
The US should adopt the Dutch healthcare system. You could have medical treatment as an average Joe and also not be bankrupt or up to your tits in debt.
I mean if they picked a random country it probably has a good chance to be twice as good as the US system
You are the product. When your liability outpaces your premium is when they decide to stop covering you.
Yeah, I wish health insurance was just “you’ll never pay more than 20k a year on medical bills” or something like that. Let me find my own damn doctor
20k a year? That would be better that what you have now? Sincerly, a non-USAian
Well, most insurance is only for emergencies, and it is priced accordingly. For example, when I drove a car, I didn’t have to deal with my auto insurance plan at all while getting gas or normal maintenance. However, when I got into a few bad accidents, the car insurance was vital for continuing to have a car, and it paid towards helping me get it fixed. Car insurance is insurance against something catastrophic happening to a vital part of life in most of America, not something to use everyday, and is priced accordingly.
Health insurance here is very different from car insurance. Rather than an emergency contingency, health insurance is woven into most healthcare purchases in the U.S. Accordingly, it is very expensive, limiting, and inefficient. Due to the dynamics of the system it creates, Americans must usually pay through the nose for even everyday healthcare without insurance.
If health insurance was operated more like car insurance, except of course that a human life should never be “totaled out,” the system would eventually adjust and normalize.
Are you suggesting routine visits not be covered? That’s how it reads… Do we think less (because it costs) basic preventative care and planning will lead to less catastrophic/etc issues? Or by not covering it are we expecting “competition” to lower the price?
Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. Keep in mind that in most other countries where insurance has less of a role, these are vastly cheaper than they are here. I expect more people will ultimately go then, especially the uninsured, because prices would no longer be artificially inflated by bureaucracy and for the purposes of negotiation with insurance.
The hard problem, the way I see it, would be taking us from here to there with minimal suffering during such a transition.
We could also go the opposite direction towards single-payer healthcare. That also can be more efficient than what we have if politicians don’t sabotage it, but I am concerned that here, they will, and we’ll end up with something like the U.K. NHS. Therefore, for the U.S. specifically, I don’t see this as a good option due to instability.
What we have now is a compromise that works for nobody.
I get what you’re saying and completely agree the current situation works for no one, but covering routine care is important. Sure, people probably could pay for routine care directly and it would be cheaper but all too many won’t. When it turns into a serious problem that could have been prevented, it’s not just their health affected but cost to the insurer and employer.
I’m pretty sure that 100% coverage of routine care has been proven cheaper than letting the person decide
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.
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.
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.
Crack open a history book or read a brief history. The product is risk pooling
a strategy where individuals, businesses, or governments combine their risks into a large group to share the financial burden of unexpected losses, making costs more predictable and manageable.
Post needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read the image due to lack of alt text (markdown image description)
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
Yes. And the best possible product for all is one pool. I.e. universal care.
What if, instead of lots of little risk pools, we had one really big risk pool, with the whole country in it? That would reduce the risk even further.
- usability
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.
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.
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.
Look at finance! They don’t make anything of actual value, they just bet what’s going to happen to the people that do
The first step for you would be to understand what an insurance is about 😃
Have you noticed a weird pattern where in your country, with insurance, the prices for non-insured individuals are through the roof? Even simple medications or procedures are so expensive you’re almost guaranteed to suffer financially from any medical procedure. Ever noticed that?
The issue with a snarky “learn what insurance is about” is that insurance companies, especially in the US, especially within healthcare, figured out a loop by which they can increase the prices so absurdly high that you need insurance and even with insurance, you’re likely going to suffer. So yes, your simplistic logic of “you pay insurance an affordable amount per month now, so that if you need something expensive later they cover you” is fundamentally destroyed by the reality where insurance companies can determine the final price, and therefore, it shifts from actual insurance into mafia.
But maybe nuance is not the strong suit of the average US citizen, so I guess a one liner snarky reply is all your working memory can afford to think through.
Also, their argument could be destroyed be simply looking at other countries, like most european ones, where healtcare is paid by taxes so everyone get low-cost healthcare and if they really want private healtcare they can still pay a company
Health insurance in sane is fine though, so the thing in the screenshot is bollocks. That’s the point of the comment.
the first step for you would be shutting up and having your first neuron activation at last
Taking your premiums and finding ways to deny your claim.
Done, what’s next?
Person: here’s some money
Company: oh cool thanks
Person: ok now give it back
Company: yeah about that
An insurance organization operated for the benefit of the insured gives value. An insurance organization run for the benefit of investors gives the barest minimum (or less) to the insured and takes lives in the name of profits.
It would make sense if health insurance just covered hospitalizations, catastrophic diseases, etc. But it’s required for any healthcare to be affordable and healthcare is a necessity.
Its like a subscription model, but worse because you don’t actually know what will be included (covered) or denied.
Imagine if 90% of the time, Spotify would only play an album if you asked to play it twice, unless it was an album in the billboard top ten, and sometimes it would decide to not play an album at all, and it had made deals with every record company that made physical media versions of albums cost $5,000. That’s what health insurance is like.
I hope she’s criticizing for profit companies and not the concept of health insurance per se.
You give me money in exchange for a promise, and I won’t honor that promise when you ask for assistance.
What’s the point of health insurance anyway?
They just charge exorbitant prices for basic BS. Single bandage at the hospital? $20 please JUST for the bandage, nothing yet for the nurse, no no that’s separate.
Meanwhile you could get 10 bandages at the local pharmacy for $5 and if you’re nice the clerk wraps it around your wound.
The only system that makes sense is a controlled state system like we have in the EU where the prices are strictly regulated.
Hell, even here the prices are high, but not THAT high.
Health insurance is 90% of the problem
If a licensed physician prescribes a procedure, insurance shouldn’t evaluate whether it’s needed. That’s it.
