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I have asked this question numerous times on other threads but no one will even address it.
What benefits do health insurance companies provide for patients in exchange for the large amounts of our healthcare dollars that they consume? I would love to hear some serious answers, because I can't think of a single one.
I have asked this question numerous times on other threads but no one will even address it.
What benefits do health insurance companies provide for patients in exchange for the large amounts of our healthcare dollars that they consume? I would love to hear some serious answers, because I can't think of a single one.
Insure against catastrophic health expenses, but not for general health care. Nor is it to provide you enough care so that you don't die.
You didn’t like the answer I gave you last time but it doesn’t mean it’s not truth.
I have asked this question numerous times on other threads but no one will even address it.
What benefits do health insurance companies provide for patients in exchange for the large amounts of our healthcare dollars that they consume? I would love to hear some serious answers, because I can't think of a single one.
Since the ACA you have coverage which gets you a physical, blood work, mandated tests (colonoscopy, mammograms, and others), vaccinations at no additional cost. Depending on the plan (usually employer provided) costs and maximum payouts are lower then individual policies. They also give you wellness access and most have 800 phone numbers for questions concerning costs, pricing of providers as well as ability to talk to a nurse to ask questions.
There may be more, the list is what I have seen and used. Prior to ACA I paid insurance and received nothing in return unless I had a Serious issue.
1. Spreading risk. God forbid you or I could be diagnosed with cancer, have a heart attack, or get hit by a literal bus tomorrow and you want to buy protection against the possibility of that.
2. Proactive and preemptive rate negotiations with providers. Many medical care providers, particularly hospitals, ambulances, and anesthesiologists, screw people without insurance or some other preemptively negotiated rate as hard as they can in an emergency. Insurance protects you from that to some extent.
3. Aggregate negotiating power. You or I can can't do anything to negotiate down the price of a drug. An insurer covering tens of millions of people can (if there is more than one alternative to treat a given condition).
4. Disease management and care coordination. Not all insurers do this and even then only for people sick enough to be worth their time managing, but some do and it can keep people healthier and reduce costs if done well.
Of course, our insurance system can break down. Take for example the Hep-C drugs. If you are not injecting heroin and haven't gone untested since you got a blood transfusion decades ago before they tested for it, you don't have Hep-C and have no need to insure against it. However, if you bought insurance in the last few years, a not-negligible chunk of your premium went to pay for $100K a pop treatments for Hep-C to a company with the only treatment in a regulatory environment where they could name literally any price they wanted limited only by political blow-back, where insurers had to cover it, and where you or your employer had to buy insurance or get penalized by the government. That's not rate negotiation or risk pooling, that's a massive transfer of resources from everyone else to the pharma companies with a bit of social welfare on the side mandated by the feds, and flowing through the health insurance system. Then you look at your premiums and go, is this really the expected value of the cost of insuring me, and it's the cost of the system but its fat with stuff like the rents Gilead is extracting from our entire society.
I have asked this question numerous times on other threads but no one will even address it.
What benefits do health insurance companies provide for patients in exchange for the large amounts of our healthcare dollars that they consume? I would love to hear some serious answers, because I can't think of a single one.
They provide the same benefit all insurers of anything provide: money up front.
Unfortunately, because you don't have a Free Market system, you don't have freedom of choice for doctors or hospitals, and you don't have the freedom to choose your coverage. Also, people pay higher rates, because the majority of people are forced to get healthcare through their employer, instead of State-wide markets.
I have asked this question numerous times on other threads but no one will even address it.
What benefits do health insurance companies provide for patients in exchange for the large amounts of our healthcare dollars that they consume? I would love to hear some serious answers, because I can't think of a single one.
Go without insurance and get admitted to a hospital and you would find out...
Healthcare in the USA is so expensive and overpriced that unless you are rich no one in the world could afford.
One big reason for that is the health insurance companies. As middlemen they do not provide any benefits whatsoever.
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