this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics

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[–] undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well yeah, that's how they got the 120 billion. This is the system working completely as intended. "It's not a bug. It's a feature."

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

That's the health funds working to gain full control of their cash cow. They don't want to share the profits of future kills with investors so they're buying them out

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 26 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Since 2010, they’ve raked in a combined $9 trillion in revenue, netting more than $371 billion in profits

When they phrase it that way the insurance companies actually look better than they're commonly marked for. If I'm putting the right number of 0s in a calculator that's a profit rate of 4.12% which is a heck of a lot less than places like the retailers where they can afford to have a half off sale.

What we could really use is breakout of the 'above bottom line' expenditures to see who takes what from each $ put in.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The metric you need is what percent of revenue was used to pay doctors and hostpitals vs how much was wasted on “buisiness expenses”

Profit is just the leftovers that they couldnt figure out how to spend before tax time

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pretty well what I said with regards to the above bottom line. I know someone has put out some nice pie chart at some point to say what % of your premium dollar goes to what, will have to try and track one down.

Several years ago, a BadgerCare (the State of Wisconsin's Medicaid program) administrator told me once that the program has less than 3% administrative overhead. That means that out of every dollar spent on the program, $0.97 goes to pay for Wisconsin residents' medical care. He said that private insurance companies have something closer to 30% administrative overhead. I have no idea what it is now.

[–] kryptonidas@lemmings.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Profit is what remains after paying your executives large sums of money.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Profit is a useless measure in most respects. The money they spend on executive compensation and stock buybacks isn’t part of the profits. The money they funnel to their fake charities and non profits isn’t part of the profits. The money they give to politicians and high priced consultant friends is not part of the profits. Profit is really just what’s left over after quite of few people have already profited quite a bit.

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

It also shows how convoluted and busy work the system is, how many utterly pointless jobs involved.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Retail stores don't kill people by raising the price of some shirt...

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago
[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  1. Buy shares in health insurer

  2. Get claim denied

  3. Sell shares

  4. Pay medical bills and watch the share price drop for added schadenfreude

[–] jeeva@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Step 0. Have enough money to buy enough shares to pay your medical bills? 😬

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 16 points 1 week ago

Step -1) dad with emerald mine

[–] Blackout@fedia.io 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hell yeah my one share went up 3%. Time to get that penis reduction surgery I've been putting off

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Man, I thought I was alone.

This thing drags behind me like a tail. I could donate multiple penises to multiple innie dicks and I could still use mine as a lasso.

Is that you, John Dillermand?

[–] Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee 10 points 1 week ago

In America, ostensibly the richest nation in the world, we ration healthcare whilst the right wing politicians jeer about Canada’s system as a slippery slope to “death panels” denying care. Whilst UHC and the gang do the same thing, and that’s ‘controlling cost’ or ‘delivering efficiency’.

Distribution on a timescale is about capacity - if it’s slow for you to receive a service, that’s likely because there isn’t capacity. That capacity may have never existed because a bean counter deemed it more profitable to not hire nurses/buy dialysis machines/build a new hospital wing/etc. and have a backlog of cases.

Or that capacity exists, but is sequestered and reserved for those who pay even more; personal doctors, private clinics, or specialists who are kept idle on contract for demand surges.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

crazy how making health care a for profit industry has led to what some would call "death panels"

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In the corporate world the words larcenous and lascivious are interchangeable