https://mas.to/@MikeBeas/113666556469008087
EDIT: I think you should get the service you pay for, just so that’s clear.
Mike is not wrong. In fact, he’s very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.
I’m not sure that was the argument he was trying to make though.
he’s very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.
He’s laying the case for why insurance must either operate as a public loss-leader or a privatized scam. But I don’t think he really understands the bottom layer of the argument.
All I’m seeing is “Insurance is business. Business need to make money. Therefore denying claims is good aktuly.” There’s no “ah ha” bit at the end where he recognizes their predatory nature.
Do you guys think politicians have a duty to adhere to their campaign promises? They’re not under oath. They have no responsibility to improve anyone’s life. They’re a business to win votes to alter policy in their favour.
UnitedHealth Group is so vertically integrated that, in fact they do own doctors, hospitals and pharmacies under the Optum brand. So yes, they do have a duty to take care of people even if they act like they don’t.
Not giving you the coverage you pay for is theft. When are we going to normalize that and start putting CEOs in jail?
Only after revolution, share holders run the country, they wont allow us to cut into their grossly unnecessary wealth, they would rather we die.
Oblige them
This gaslighting won’t work anymore
I don’t care what that guy thinks.
To make it easier to understand for our short term minds, let’s sketch a different scenario.
You hire a bodyguard. They’re a 7"2 giant bodybuilder with armor. Then someone walks towards you with a knife, raising it up and staring you in the eyes with a frantic expression.
Your giant bodyguard steps aside, and watches are you slowly get tortured to death. Little by little, while you scream for help. The bodyguard tells you Venezuelan blood torture is not covered.
I think someone might rightfully be upset with this bodyguard company. Perhaps as much as the health insurance company that forces people to go into a year long legal battle to get cancer treatment.
At least, that’s what I’ve been hearing about the healthcare system in the usa as of recent.
It doesn’t have to be a solemn vow. The definition of insurance is that it’s a guarantee. If it’s denying claims it’s technically not even providing insurance.
Insurance is defined at its core as a transfer of risk. Its that simple. If insurance denies everything I send their way while I am paying them, its no longer a transfer of risk, I am simply paying someone to tell me ‘no’.
That out of the way, the whole health insurance industry does not follow the concept of transfer of risk. The insurance companies rather follow the concept of transfer of action. Basically I am not going to spend all day negotiating with a hospital. That said, them denying is because they do not want to do the work still, so in other words, I am still paying someone to tell me ‘no’.
In both concepts, the insurance companies are not doing what they ascribed to. Along with the laws that congress stripped away affordable care to its basics that we all are required to have it - read an extra tax but to corporations who give kick backs to their congressional lackeys - and the fact that insurance companies basically are price fixing all the rates and such, it becomes a lose (you)/lose (you)/lose (hospitals)/only ones who win are the companies.
Late stage capitalism hard at work.
Any company that promises goods and/or services in exchange for money that takes your money in exchange said goods and/or services and then doesn’t deliver services or goods is a scam
If that’s the tack he wants to take with his argument, than in fact that opposite is true.
They’re a business. You provide them money and they provide a service. So in that respect, there should be no such thing as denial of service for ANYTHING because you’ve already paid for it.
What about the contract?
I think that if money exchanges hands, it’s part of a deal that must be honored by the other party.
They’re getting very close to saying the quiet part aloud, and the quiet part is…
“Everyone except for the .0001% exists for the service of said .0001%, and the fact that you have any self-respect or value for your lives is a failing on your part peon!”
Insurance is a racket. Is that what Lil Mikey is saying?
The customers of insurance companies are shareholders.
That’s not what a share holder is
You misunderstand. The service that insurance companies provide is one that is for shareholders. It’s a way of allocating and rationing medical care while also keeping business going.
Poor people don’t own hospitals. Poor people can’t develop medicines and medical equipment. Can’t train and hire doctors. That stuff is extremely expensive. The capital class owns that stuff, right?
They aren’t just going give it away are they? But they do need a labor force that, though desperate, isn’t too sickly that their labor can’t be exploited.
The service that health insurers provide to their actual customers, the capital class, is to reallocate the aforementioned expenses back onto workers by way of premiums and limiting care to the bare minimum.
This is why health insurance is tied to employment in America. You (most likely) didn’t hire your health insurer and negotiate your insurance contract, your employer did. It’s not for you, it’s for them, and really, for their owners, who extract the value of your healthy labor from your employer.
And this isn’t come an-cap or communist hot take, this is just the economics of how healthcare works in America. You’re getting the care, sure, and if you’re covered hopefully you’re in the road to recovery and won’t become insolvent due to medical debts, but this system is not for your benefit. It’s not out to save you money. You are at best an afterthought, a concept of a customer. More of a number.
The OOP described is, in different terms, as if health insurer was nothing more than a risk pool cooperative.
Here are the customers of UNH:
They also own the hospital groups, the device makers, and the pharmaceuticals.
Crowd sourcing heathcare funds and taking bets on who gets sick sounds great but only if it’s some capitalist Rube Goldberg Machine. Otherwise that’s communism.
