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Comment by dgacmu | Hacker News Reader

It's the opposite -- the insurance company saves money by having people get the flu shot:

1 flu shot reduces probability of flu to ~70% of what it was before.

0.7 * Cost to treat average flu case + Cost Flu shot < 1.0 * Cost to treat average flu case

Insurance companies have pretty good stats underlying that sort of decision. At CMU this year, they were paying you to get a flu shot (in the form of a $5 gift card, with the flu shot being free).

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One strange thing about this thread is all the people equating the net cost to the insurance company with the cost to themselves. I don't normally come across that attitude, usually the insurance company is perceived as an adversary you need to fight to get the deserved coverage.

The world is more complex than that. Many (probably every) large organization/industry does both good and bad things.

Insurance, ultimately, is a way of sharing risk. Even more abstractly, it is about aligning interests. I think this is one part of why people get so upset with insurance when there is dispute - it feels a little like a betrayal.

I'm not really talking about health insurance in the abstract, but rather the current implementation (which seems very shady to many people).

I doubt current insurance companies care whether you get the flu or not. They just care whether you go to the doctor for it, eg if enough people think "It must be a cold" and self-medicate that works for them.

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