Practically everything about health care in the united states is about middle men. Prices are set almost entirely based on how much bargaining power any one particular entity has. The bigger your...
Practically everything about health care in the united states is about middle men. Prices are set almost entirely based on how much bargaining power any one particular entity has. The bigger your insurer, the better the rates they get. This is why there's a chargemaster and why no two insurance companies get billed the same amount for the same service. This is why if you're uninsured you get an absurdly high bill. This is why there's an absurdly high bill sent to your insurance, of which the amount they actually pay is obscured to you.
Nearly anyone who works in health care agrees that this is a predatory system. The system is broken. It's why you hear so many of us arguing for single payer. There's so much overhead being absorbed by third party companies. Take a look at the financials of any pharmaceutical company, healthcare insurance provider, or hospital in the united states. With few exceptions, they all make an absurd amount of money. I happen to work for a healthcare provider that got up in arms because their operating margin dipped into single digits and fired the entire c-suite. A multibillion dollar company was worried their operating margin was below 10%. They were upset that they weren't making at least hundreds of millions of dollars each year in profit. Think about that for a minute.
Practically everything about health care in the united states is about middle men. Prices are set almost entirely based on how much bargaining power any one particular entity has. The bigger your insurer, the better the rates they get. This is why there's a chargemaster and why no two insurance companies get billed the same amount for the same service. This is why if you're uninsured you get an absurdly high bill. This is why there's an absurdly high bill sent to your insurance, of which the amount they actually pay is obscured to you.
Nearly anyone who works in health care agrees that this is a predatory system. The system is broken. It's why you hear so many of us arguing for single payer. There's so much overhead being absorbed by third party companies. Take a look at the financials of any pharmaceutical company, healthcare insurance provider, or hospital in the united states. With few exceptions, they all make an absurd amount of money. I happen to work for a healthcare provider that got up in arms because their operating margin dipped into single digits and fired the entire c-suite. A multibillion dollar company was worried their operating margin was below 10%. They were upset that they weren't making at least hundreds of millions of dollars each year in profit. Think about that for a minute.