So with the 80/20 rule, they can ONLY pocket 20% of all the money they bring in? And yet, that isn't enough? Man, it's like if they aren't scraping every fucking cent they can they aren't happy so they have to find fucking loopholes.
My company JUST switched to Blue Cross this year... god damn it. Sure enough, even after the pay raise, I'm making less this year than last. How's that for math... Work hard, get paid more, make less... /boggle
Insurers like Aetna and Anthem Blue Cross are requesting rate hikes as steep as 26 percent
Fallakin Kuvari wrote:Because laws that require voters to have an ID (Something they are required to have anyway) are bad....
It's why you need to divorce health insurance from employment. Give everyone the free selection of health insurers in an open market and all this crap vanishes.
Minute wrote:So with the 80/20 rule, they can ONLY pocket 20% of all the money they bring in? And yet, that isn't enough? Man, it's like if they aren't scraping every fucking cent they can they aren't happy so they have to find fucking loopholes.
My company JUST switched to Blue Cross this year... god damn it. Sure enough, even after the pay raise, I'm making less this year than last. How's that for math... Work hard, get paid more, make less... /boggle
Insurers like Aetna and Anthem Blue Cross are requesting rate hikes as steep as 26 percent
Remember that the fundamental profit of insurance is to make sure that, as a group, all the insured face a total loss equal to or higher than the sum of individual losses in the group. The benefit to the individual is that there's less fluctuation. Supposedly. But you will, in aggregate, get screwed.
The basic problem with removing the employer from the picture is that the individual does not command enough premium, and the insurers are not afraid to collude.
Arathena wrote:The basic problem with removing the employer from the picture is that the individual does not command enough premium, and the insurers are not afraid to collude.
That doesn't make sense to me. The employer's interests are not aligned with the individual's interests, and are (in general) more aligned with those of the insurance company: to profit. This is especially true for self-funded employer insurance where the insurance company is acting as an administrator rather than a risk aggregator.
I don't believe there is a sufficient barrier to entry on an individual insurance market (especially if you allow out-of-state insurance, and make waiting periods on insurance transfers illegal) to make collusion workable. There's a massive prisoner's dilemma case on the insurance industry where every player would have to trust every other player to not break the agreement and offer lower premiums. Just as with every other insurance segment, lively competition tends to emerge.
The real danger is the current issues you have with insurance in general when a company decides it's more profitable to simply not pay because the clients can't afford to sue. I think that crap needs to be smacked down with criminal penalties on company executives.
Arathena wrote:The basic problem with removing the employer from the picture is that the individual does not command enough premium, and the insurers are not afraid to collude.
That doesn't make sense to me. The employer's interests are not aligned with the individual's interests, and are (in general) more aligned with those of the insurance company: to profit. This is especially true for self-funded employer insurance where the insurance company is acting as an administrator rather than a risk aggregator.
I don't believe there is a sufficient barrier to entry on an individual insurance market (especially if you allow out-of-state insurance, and make waiting periods on insurance transfers illegal) to make collusion workable. There's a massive prisoner's dilemma case on the insurance industry where every player would have to trust every other player to not break the agreement and offer lower premiums. Just as with every other insurance segment, lively competition tends to emerge.
The real danger is the current issues you have with insurance in general when a company decides it's more profitable to simply not pay because the clients can't afford to sue. I think that crap needs to be smacked down with criminal penalties on company executives.
Dd
The employer's interest is to pay as little as possible: The (large) has purchasing, and thus negotiating power. The individual does not.
Arathena wrote:The employer's interest is to pay as little as possible: The (large) has purchasing, and thus negotiating power. The individual does not.
But the employer doesn't care about value for money, just money. They'll (generally) slash whatever benefits they think they can get away with to lower their own outlay. In general though, large organisations are self-insured anyway so there is a large and obvious conflict of interest.
I don't know much about health insurance but I have worked extensively with property/casualty/dwelling/fire and I can say definitively that most insurance companies operate at a loss ratio over 100%. Which means for every dollar they take in premium, more than one dollar goes out in claims. They only make money from short term investments, and only on a huge scale. Even then, by law, a huge chunk of that profit has to be held in reserve to pay claims. So, most of the insurance companies I work with struggle to stay profitable and keep their deep reserves.
From a consumer standpoint, the entire purpose of an insurance company is to pay claims. People try to save a buck or two on premium, but any company can take your money. Unless the company reliably pays its claims, then it doesn't matter how much you saved on premium. That's why you should watch that Allstate commercial haha.
