Why I don’t see mentioned is: why?
Is it about reliability? Cost? Both? Why not-for-profit?
What controls will be in place to ensure that this one new company will be more responsive to the public than the prior two, smaller companies?
Is it about reliability? Cost? Both? Why not-for-profit?
What controls will be in place to ensure that this one new company will be more responsive to the public than the prior two, smaller companies?
Now, does that mean that the primary incentive will be the well-being of the consumer? Time will tell, and only if this initiative even makes it through.
I even think for-profit schools are a shitty idea, but this may be less obvious why
Aren't there millions upon millions of people covered by non-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans? BC/BS of Michigan is the largest insurer in the state with over five million covered.
And it can introduce others who are interested in profiting - paying the C-level execs of the non-profit, etc.
Or introduce inefficiencies where the non-profit realizes that a "profit" is looming so they waste a bunch of money on stupid stuff to continue to not go over reasonable guidelines on rainy-day funds.
American insurance company profits are higher than I'd like, but ultimately the magic of America's healthcare is its inefficiency. When you end up owing $3000 for a very minor ER visit, the money didn't just go to the insurance company's profits: A lot of people made more money out of it than in an equivalent visit in, say, a hospital in Spain. And it's not as if the inefficiencies are just due to a single part of the healthcare system being worse all by itself.
The difficult part is that one person's inefficiency is someone else's lunch, or yearly safari to Kenya, so every move to cut costs is politically untenable. Non profits don't fix this, any more than non-profit colleges make US higher education cheap.
I think calling it "inefficiency" whitewashes the real problem. That "inefficiency" leads to a much higher rate of unnecessary deaths and adverse health outcomes in the US than nearly every other advanced nation.
And often, even if you can get good health care, the financial consequences are devastating. Even if you have insurance.
Look at how much the CEOs of non-profits make and ask yourself if you really believe that.