Health-insurance premiums could rise 40% or more next year

This was to be expected, and it won’t be well received. It’s also not necessary, and shouldn’t happen. Much of the US Healthcare expense when insurance companies are involved is fake.

For example, last week I got a medical statement from my insurance. The total cost was a couple grand. I paid 20$ co-pay, and insurance paid a couple hundred. The remainder was “negotiated down, look at this great value your insurance provided!”

If I were to pay out of pocket the 220$ instead of my health insurance premium that month I could have easily paid it. The same is true for emergency surgeries, the actual medical cost of things like brain surgery is around 10-15k. Atleast at some providers, and not hospitals that gouge.

My point here is - Insurance companies have spend decades rewriting the healthcare system to their advantage. They’ve spent years boosting the cost of healthcare, while paying only a fraction and making the remainder of the money disappear. Hospitals have spent years reducing costs while charging 100k for some surgeries in hopes they’ll get even 20k. And have 80k “negotiated”.

There’s plenty of money in the system between insurance companies and healthcare systems. The resolution here isn’t single-payer. The resolution is to force insurance companies to pay their fair share instead of hoarding money.

There’s no reason they should increase their rates right now. They should be breaking into their reserves to handle this.

And already, US healthcare spending is at least twice that of other developed countries, at arguably much reduced availability to the average American.

as an outsider, the inability of the USA to change its healthcare system is baffling.

It’s always just an excuse to screw more people and these companies should be abolished.

In each case, both sides are going to try as hard as they can to isolate the losses to the other party. In situations where their bargaining power and leverage are balanced, both parties will bear some of the loss. In cases where one side has much more economic power, well, you can see where this is going.

In the insurance and health care markets, barring radical restructuring, it will come down to state regulators to ensure that the costs come out well-balanced. Some state boards are going to find this easier to do than others, but I don't think it will trend out on left-right political lines.

>"The potential impacts detailed in this report reflect what could happen absent decisive federal action. If these impacts are not mitigated, the public health and economic consequences to consumers, small and large employers and health insurers are potentially staggering, including:

• Consumers and employees not getting needed testing or treatments due to cost barriers, both for COVID-19 but also for other health conditions.

• Employers no longer being able to offer affordable coverage, or dramatically shifting costs to employees.

• Consumers and employers no longer being able to afford coverage, leading to employer groups dropping coverage or individuals deciding to go uninsured.

• Even more unsubsidized marketplace enrollees being priced out of individual markets.

• Small insurers risk insolvency, and if they close, put covered consumers at financial risk, damaging competition that benefits consumers and the employers that purchase on behalf of millions of Americans.

• Dramatic cost increases, many of which will be borne by the federal government in the form of higher Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTC), or by both federal and state governments paying for increased Medicaid enrollment as individuals and employers drop coverage"

Aren't almost all of these things not only already true but have also been true for years now?

Don't they every year? Not even kidding.

quite simply, there is no economy without consumer demand for services. and consumers who pay higher rents to their health insurance company have less money to spend. the money doesn't ever trickle back down into the economy once it is lost inside of the insurance system.

nevermind that millions of people have lost their employer-provided health insurance after being laid off. for them, these discussions of health insurance premiums rising are a bit academic; there is no chance of care being accessible or affordable, even if the monthly toll of maintaining expensive insurance is rising astronomically.

it's clear the the US healthcare system cannot continue in its current form. it is my hope that people will no longer entertain delusions of perseverating the present system. it's decidedly non-serious to consider that the ACA might be reformed further to keep the current system.

the only true debates remaining are about how much of the healthcare system should be under the public's control, which we can boil down to two camps: above 70% public ownership, or above 40% but less than 70%. the former camp includes ideas like single payer and medicare for all, whereas the latter camp includes hybrid systems which are closer to switerland's or germany's systems.

A free market requires price discrimination to establish prices. By definition some people must be priced out of the market. There is no free market in healthcare that will deliver anything close to the correct care for the people who need it, and as mentioned delaying the purchase of care or substituting the wrong care is often the worst of both worlds.

Health insurance is uniquely terrible: denying care is the quickest way to increase profits, and unlike fire insurance healthcare is needed by everyone at some point (most people never have their house burn down).

There are some things the free market is bad at. Natural monopolies are one. Healthcare is another.