Quote: Insurance companies are in business because health care dont cost what they charge. They pool and invest and profit. What if the actual health care providers could do this in co-ops and control costs from there. Then tou would not have insurance companies profit and the medical provider profiting creating a need for double profiting. This would reduce cost. If ya take my meaning.
I'm on board. Sign me up. Actually, that's kind of what I have now.
Again, I'm not advocating here, I am currently part of a hospital system self insurance plan and had BCBS before that, but there is one part of the Affordable Care Act that I really, really am in favor of (actually one of many, it just doesn't do enough).
In the past for profit health insurance companies could skim as much of the premiums for profits and bonuses and they wanted. Under the ACA they are required to put 80% premiums toward patient care and 20% for overhead. While that's still a huge skim compared to Medicare's 2.8%, it wasn't unusual for a for profit company to skim off 38%+ previously to cover those eight (or nine) figure salaries of the guys at the top.
I've had many fellow health care providers go to work for insurance companies. Every one of them left within a year. They all said the same thing. Their jobs were to figure a way to not pay claims. That's what they did all day long. Find a loophole in the plan so the company wouldn't have to pay. I think the better of them for leaving the bigger paychecks behind to save their souls.
