this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
581 points (98.5% liked)

memes

10663 readers
1808 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] zxqwas@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (6 children)

While it's good that you'd want to improve the system you'll have to look deeper as to why.

First results from my search:

Health insurance has about 3.3% net profit margin. United had 3.6% last data I found. (The rest of US industry average is 8.54%.)

The profit margins of insurance alone can't explain why your healthcare costs 40% more than any other country.

[–] nieminen@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago

Considering insurance, and medical facilities negotiate to set their costs every year, I don't trust that their profit is so low.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago

I'd chalk this up to the kind of "creative accounting" they do in the movie industry. But that's just a guess, I don't have any knowledge on the matter.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 8 points 4 days ago

A small percentage of hyper inflated prices over a large consumer base still equates to MASSIVE profits. It is a fundamental ethical flaw that we even allow for-profit medicine that is compounded by obvious cartel organization structures and corruption.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago

That’s by design.

The money is being paid out and the profits reaped elsewhere.

[–] Krzd@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Some of that is "clever" accounting, the rest is that healthcare insurances don't have bargaining power with the providers. In Germany the state insurance companies have collective bargaining power so that for example an ambulance ride costs 500€ instead of 15000.

[–] Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 4 days ago

Even if I took this at face value it only confirms to me even more that for profit insurance is a ghoulish waste of resources. So much pain and suffering just to milk people in need of a pittance of a profit margin (relatively speaking) is atrocious.