Maybe instead of paying for the c-suite's bonuses, they need to be paying someone to air the dirty laundry of the health system that's charging $15 for an acetaminophen. When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care. Hell, doing actual work to reduce the cost of care is expensive, and we can't possibly expect the retirement funds and major shareholders of America to pay for that.
> When someone's f*cking both you and your customer like that, you go after them. But it's not about that, is it? It's about transferring value to shareholders, not reducing the costs of care.
It's almost as if it's not an easy problem to solve, or some other health insurance company would do it and put all the other ones out of business.
It's not an easy problem to solve if you're not interested in solving the problem.
And they're not. Like I said, the goal of for-profit health insurance companies is not to maximize economic benefits for customers; it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders. It's a lot easier to transfer value to shareholders by just denying the claim submitted by the customer for that pill than it is to actually (legally) beat the entity charging for the pill into permanent submission. So that's what they do.
> it's to maximize economic benefits for shareholders
Except health insurance is regulated, and you can only maximize profits to a small degree (which is the only reason UHC's profit margin is 6% instead of 40%).
This incentivizes health insurance companies to provide a good enough service that people want their insurance. Capturing a lot of the market is their ONLY way to make money.
They literally don't have the option to ask, "how do we just take more of our customers money and stuff it in our pockets?"
That's not really that terrible if the company is Apple and selling products that nobody NEEDS. It is terrible if you've only got a few choices and their selling something everyone needs - hence the regulation of profits.
It's almost as if our country isn't run by complete idiots.
Is it a perfect system? No.
Is there an obvious, far superior system? Also, no.
It's almost as if healthcare spending isn't the only variable that matters - and it matters how fat and sedentary your population is, and how much you pay doctors and nurses.
It's almost as if the world isn't so reductive complex issues can be reduced to cute little charts.
A single Tylenol in a hospital costs $15.
If you think a few cents is going to do anything, you are completely bamboozled.
A few cents is nothing in healthcare.