P-Necromancer
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User ID: 3278
P-Necromancer
6d ago
This is a more complicated question than it sounds.
It's true health insurance companies have very thin margins: almost always <5%. And it's even true that the ratio of premiums paid out to revenue collected (the 'loss ratio') is rather high across the board: >80%. ...But the reason it's strictly >80% is that that's the legally mandated minimum per the ACA. If they fall below that number, they have to issue rebates to customers to meet it.
On the face of it this sounds like a good thing, right? I've argued in the past that corporations aren't always eager in practice to maximize profit (principal-agent issues where employees and not owners are making most of the decisions), but they largely do try to maximize their own size. The law limits administrative bloat!
Except... it doesn't. It limits bloat to a percentage of payouts. If they negotiate well and push prices down, they reduce their profit/operating budget! Unless it's compensated by more custom, of course; the normal competitive pressures do still exist. But this rule absolutely acts against that pressure.
This is a classic example of Goodhart's Law. Without this requirement, loss ratio is a good measure of efficiency; since a company will always try to minimize their expenses (the ones that involve sending checks to other businesses and don't benefit any employees, anyway), high loss ratios just mean there's adequate competitive pressure to keep them lean. But now? Who can say? The number is going to be >80% no matter how much or little competitive pressure they're under. If competition is insufficient, they'll just throw money at doctors and hospitals, because that's the only way they're allowed to raise profit/operating budget (via higher premiums). And if they were, it would exactly like you're describing.
But are they? I'm really not sure. Loss ratios were often lower before the ACA (sometimes as low as 60%), but a lot has changed about the healthcare market since 2011. Health costs are going up everywhere, not just the US. It's a murky subject and I don't think there are many easy answers to be found.
P-Necromancer
23d ago
It's a much worse point than that -- what do porn site age limits have to do with Grindr? Porn isn't generally a social activity that leads one to go out and meet new, potentially dangerous people. Hookup sites are, obviously, but why group them together? It's like commenting
THIS IS WHY AGE VERIFICATION ON GUN PURCHASES/VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES YOU MAROONS YOU MAY NOT LIKE IT BUT THIS IS THE HELL WHY.
when discussing a shooting.
P-Necromancer
27d ago
Women have a very strong revealed preference for valuing motherhood above almost anything else, for the simple reason that women who have children overwhelmingly choose to do so again.
I don't think this is a great argument because the marginal cost of additional children when you already have one is comparatively tiny. Your first kid is an enormous commitment, demanding a massive amount of time, energy, and money. Hell, before you even get started you need to find a suitable partner, which can be hard enough on its own. But if you've already got a toddler, what's one more? You can dress them in hand-me-downs and you were going to stay home to watch the other one anyway. It means another year or two of supporting kids on the backend, but that's a long time from now, and late adolescents aren't that hard to support regardless. The additional costs aren't zero, obviously, but they're much smaller.
So even if additional kids are worthwhile, that doesn't prove that the first was. Fortunately, we don't have to wonder: The natural revealed preference argument for how much women value motherhood is the rate of motherhood. Which is decreasing.
They do, however, say that about Superman, who's the furthest thing from those stereotypes.
I don't think the fictional characters you identify with really say that much about you. At most it says how you'd like to be perceived, or how you fear others do perceive you. Wasn't there a thread a week or two ago about how real identity comes from what you do, not how you feel?
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