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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26845 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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Major complications of surgery are 1%-10% depending what we are talking about, certainly orders of magnitude more (yes I know I'm missing some things about car insurance for the sake of simplicity)

As long as these are reasonably predictable, you can calculate a price.

I don't think that's true at all. You can calculate an expected value, but 90%+ of patients won't understand that. If you tell them the price of a procedure is $2000 dollars, but the typical/median price is $1000 and the max is a million, how are they supposed to use that information?

My insurance charges all policyholders enough to pay on average $2000 for this procedure, or a copay of $2000 if we are imagining patient out of pocket. I’d say that’s rather the point of insurance. There’s some tiny chance of true financial disaster and they charge all of us a bearable portion of that small chance.

It seems to me that you're conflating pricing and insurance.

You can imagine a world where prices factor in the expected cost, but we're not in that world. If I have a complication in a routine procedure, they will charge extra to handle the complication. Then my insurance spreads that extra cost between a pool of policy holders. The pricing for the procedure doesn't spread the cost, and doesn't need to, because that's the purpose of the insurance. Instead, insurance will pay the minimum it can get away with for a specific procedure. They sure as hell aren't paying $2000 for a $1000 cost procedure because sometimes things go wrong - they pay $1000 and then upcharge when things go wrong.

If these numbers are well understood, I wonder if you could buy "procedure insurance" instead of general insurance.

As long as these are reasonably predictable, you can calculate a price.

I don't think that's true at all.

I'm sorry for being pedantic, but how does that mean what I said is "not true at all"? You literally just gave an example of a calculated price. Someone might not now a median from their ass, but you can tell them "just look at the expected value, bro". They can then use that information to compare with other providers.

I mean in the sense that doesn't match the meaning of 'price'. Conceptually a price is a fixed value that you will pay, not a variable. If you come in my store and ask the price of a sandwich, and I tell you $10, and then when you check out you're expected to pay $15, you would rightfully tell me I lied about the price.

Which is why you'd charge me the expected price to begin with, and deal with the variables yourself, maybe adjusting the prices every couple months as the situation calls for it.

You definitely would not tell me how it's impossible to calculate the price of a sandwich, because maybe the fridge breaks down that week and you might need to buy a new one.

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