Comment by massung | Hacker News Reader

Comment by massung | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t know if your topic switch was intentional - if so, my apologies and this is just for people outside the US who don’t know…

The article is about life insurance, which is very different from medical insurance.

Medical insurance companies often already go out of their way to pay early to save in the long run (e.g. free preventative care, checkups, etc.). I can’t speak to GLP-1s, but it’s possible that right now there are still active patents when used for obesity that make them crazy expensive for a few more years.

Life insurance is all about models and predictions about when you’re going to die. Any sudden change that massively impacts those models suck, because life insurers are basically gamblers with gobs of historical data they use to hedge their bets.

> Medical insurance companies often already go out of their way to pay early to save in the long run

Literally LOLed when I read this. Health insurance companies might pay lip service to this and make some token gestures like free preventative care, but in my experience health insurance companies frequently shoot themselves in the foot by denying care that later ends up costing them even more when the patient's untreated condition worsens.

The important part is the short term gains, and the people making them jumping away on a golden parachute before the long term consequences kick in.

Maybe true in US, but here in Europe ie my health insurance gives me rebate on my gym membership (any gym). With some more automated low cost gyms I can get back up to 50% back. This seems like a similar case.

Medical insurance in the US is not incentivized to save money. In fact it's just the opposite. The ACA requires that 80% of premiums be paid out to medical expenses. If an insurance company encourages people to get preventive care and lowers its expenses, that means they also have to lower premiums. So they actually want costs to be as high as possible since they get to keep 20%.

It's not a gamble, it's an application of the law of large numbers. But yes, changes in the underlying assumptions (e.g. mortality rates) can make the whole calculation untenable.

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