An Interesting Article About Health Insurance ...
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/26/health-care-insurance-prices-patients/
This part struck me:
"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."
Let's apply that to other contexts. Isn't hurricane repair in Florida an expected need, by that standard?
@Quirt-Evans said in An Interesting Article About Health Insurance ...:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/26/health-care-insurance-prices-patients/
This part struck me:
"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."
Let's apply that to other contexts. Isn't hurricane repair in Florida an expected need, by that standard?
Yes. But that definition of expected need and deeming it uninsurable sounds like something an insurance company would come up with to quit covering certain things.
Color me skeptical. I just had to call my daughter's insurance agent to find out if we could get a Hyundai insured.
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Is it a pre-existing Hyundai?
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I stumbled across a non-paywall version of the article that @Quirt-Evans posted, for anyone who wanted to read it but couldn't.
https://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/insurance-is-what-makes-us-health-care-prices-so-high
Now I'm off to read it and see what I think about it....
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/26/health-care-insurance-prices-patients/
This part struck me:
"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."
Let's apply that to other contexts. Isn't hurricane repair in Florida an expected need, by that standard?
@Quirt-Evans said in An Interesting Article About Health Insurance ...:
"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."
I think this is true. I have also thought for a long time now that health care is something that just doesn't work on the free market. If I want some trinket and the price goes too high, I don't buy it. This is a pretty direct control on the price of the trinket.
By contrast, I would empty my pockets to save my life or the life of a loved one. I have been in enough physical pain to know that the point would come when I would empty my pockets to relieve my pain or the pain of a loved one. Thus, I--and I presume most people--would not walk away from overpriced lifesaving or suffering-relieving treatment in the way that I would walk away from another overpriced item.
It follows that there has to be some kind of external control on prices, or the people who control lifesaving or suffering-relieving treatments will eventually take all we have. Health insurance companies are emphatically not going to do that for us; they prefer to just deny us coverage. No viable alternatives have arisen that I know about that would allow us to take our business somewhere where we can get better treatment or better rates. Governmental regulation seems the only alternative, but health insurance companies pretty much own our government. Anybody can see that our system is unsustainable, but I don't see any way to reform it.
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@Quirt-Evans said in An Interesting Article About Health Insurance ...:
"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."
I think this is true. I have also thought for a long time now that health care is something that just doesn't work on the free market. If I want some trinket and the price goes too high, I don't buy it. This is a pretty direct control on the price of the trinket.
By contrast, I would empty my pockets to save my life or the life of a loved one. I have been in enough physical pain to know that the point would come when I would empty my pockets to relieve my pain or the pain of a loved one. Thus, I--and I presume most people--would not walk away from overpriced lifesaving or suffering-relieving treatment in the way that I would walk away from another overpriced item.
It follows that there has to be some kind of external control on prices, or the people who control lifesaving or suffering-relieving treatments will eventually take all we have. Health insurance companies are emphatically not going to do that for us; they prefer to just deny us coverage. No viable alternatives have arisen that I know about that would allow us to take our business somewhere where we can get better treatment or better rates. Governmental regulation seems the only alternative, but health insurance companies pretty much own our government. Anybody can see that our system is unsustainable, but I don't see any way to reform it.
@Mary-Anna you articulated what I was thinking but couldn’t put into words about why the current system is so bad.
I don’t have any faith that the incoming administration will prioritize doing what’s right for people over doing what’s right for corporations.
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On a semi-related note, I posted an interview with Mark Cuban recently. His Cost Plus Drugs could be a real disrupter. Here's the link to that post.
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/1037/mark-cuban-healthcare-disrupter?_=1736020377774
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wtg, I had forgotten about Cuban's project. It will be interesting to see how it disrupts things, and it will also be interesting to see if anything arises to disrupt other aspects of health care costs. Prescription drugs are fairly easy to deliver. Nursing homes and end-of-life care, not so much. It is in those areas that it is easiest to see the way that the wealth of a generation could be transferred into the pockets of a few instead of to the next generation.
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The proliferation of assisted living/memory care centers makes me nuts. Yes, we need a way to care for our elders. But it feels like the centers are in it for the money, not about the care.
@AdagioM said in An Interesting Article About Health Insurance ...:
The proliferation of assisted living/memory care centers makes me nuts. Yes, we need a way to care for our elders. But it feels like the centers are in it for the money, not about the care.
Exactly. And it seems like the nice ones are super, super expensive...
We're trying to figure out a way to have my mother move to our new town, and I was hoping maybe she could move into one of those mixed communities that have independent living apartments and assisted apartments in the same complex. It would be nice if she could start in an independent one and have the option to move into assisted if needed...
But I don't know... and she's not keen to "live with a bunch of old people" as she put it! She's 80, for the record.
