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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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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.