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Culture war going hot: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
A gunman has killed the CEO of United Healthcare this morning, and has disappeared into the city. I’m somewhat surprised this isn’t more common, especially given the nature of healthcare company’s profit motives. I could imagine “we denied your wife’s medical claim and are sorry for her death. Also your bill is past due and we are sending you to collections. Thank you understanding.” might be a story that exists in a lot of people.
Expect to see more private security, more private flights, more underground parking and armored cars and so forth for a while.
This was clearly an assassination.
Your anger at health insurance companies is misplaced. If the profit motive is the problem, a public option is a solution, but American voters (especially right-leaning ones) have been pretty emphatic about refusing it.
Companies have to deny some claims or else premiums would have to rise for everyone. UHC's profit margins are actually far lower than e.g. Apple's.
Insurance companies aren't allowed to be insurance companies anymore. To the degree they have a profit motive, it's highly dysfunctional.
Case in point, under the ACA the profit a health insurance company is allowed to make is capped proportional to their operation expenses. Off the top of my head, I think they are only allowed 20% overhead. So 80% of all premiums collected need to be paid out to claims. I've actually gotten refunds from my health insurance (albeit only once) when they were in violation of this law and had to give some money back.
So really, health insurance companies can't just deny claims and keep the money. They only way for them to make more money is to let the cost of everything skyrocket, raise premiums sky high, and then keep 20% of a much larger pot. Which is more or less what has happened the last 15 years since the ACA was passed.
Do you have any data to support that argument? I'm not an expert, but 5 minutes on google makes it look like premiums have been increasing in a straight line since at least the late 90s.
See figure 1.12 and also this reference.
Premiums are only one component of healthcare costs. A "straight line" is one thing, the slope of the line is what matters. Family premiums are up 89% since 2008, compared to ~43% cumulative inflation.. Outcomes and features have degraded since ACA, I'd argue.
Your point (the overall rate of change pre-and-post ACA) seems valid. However, I don't think "things continued to get way worse at the same rate" counts as a victory.
Obamacare accelerated the inevitable failure of this healthcare system and was only engineered to be a pernicious trojan horse for single-payer.
How much of the change in family premiums is due to more elderly dependents?
The rate increase is only slightly higher for family than individuals. They're essentially the same.
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