this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
127 points (94.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36145 readers
1218 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Health insurance at its core is very simple. You put money in, you go to doctor, insurance pay doctor. But in the USA, the insurance denies everything they possibly can. Money put in doesn't ever see a doctor or your health costs, it goes right to the stockholders....

So why doesn't someone just make a non-profit health insurance company where there's no stock, no executives, just public servants and aggressive price negotiation where your medical bills are actually paid with the money put in?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 52 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yep, and it's not like it's just cheaper, benefits packages are tied into compensation.

Say you pay $400, insurance says the real price is $800, and your employer only pays another $200 as a "discount" but the real cost is actually $600. But turn down coverage, you don't get that $200 in extra pay.

Without an employer, you have to pay the whole $800.

With a co-op you'd pay the actual real cost of $600.

It needs a critical mass of people.

And OP doesn't understand a non profit still has a CEO that can be paid millions. The organization can't make a profit, but lots of corrupt people make a lot of money running non profits.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is over $1000 per moth for me that I'm turning away. there is just no way anyone can compete with that. much as I don't like my insurance my costs must go up by a lot if I skip my companies insurance.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Yeah. I was just making up numbers for illustrative purposes.

As much as people shit on the VA, they've been my healthcare provider for over a decade and I just legitimately don't know what numbers look like anymore.

It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than the majority have to deal with

[–] kiterios@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And the more you dig into it, the worse it gets. That price discrepancy exists at the provider level too.

  • You have a health issue and need treatment.
  • The treatment cost the Dr $200 to perform.
  • The list price for the treatment is $500.
  • The big insurer uses the weight of their customer base to negotiate with the Dr and the agree to pay $300 for the treatment. If the doctor doesn't accept, then they're out of network and can't get patients.
  • The plucky startup co-op doesn't have the same negotiating leverage, so they have to pay $400 for the treatment.
  • The co-op is going to cost more to operate, and now the real monthly cost you have to pay with the co-op is $700 instead of $600.

And it gets worse.

This video is a nice little primer about how the insurer might not even pay that $300 they agreed to, how that let's them profit further on the treatment while creating financial pressure on healthcare providers, and how your Dr may end up being owned by the insurer, further reducing the ability of a new co-op to compete.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Everything with "middle men" is like that.

Numbers get inflated then discounted.

It's why it's present at every step of capitalism, at every step someone takes a cut, so the price is inflated, then "discounted" to what consumers are willing to pay which is still an insane profit margin.