[fatnoah]

>The wider implications of this are left to the reader.

IMHO, it's actually worse than we realize. The Medical Loss Ratio requirement is good because it requires insurance companies to spend 80% or 85% of premiums on health care. It's bad because one way for insurance companies to make more money is to have inflated health care prices to justify increasing premiums so they can get 80% of a bigger pie. It also gives them incentives to provide care themselves so they can capture some of that 80% spend.

> For the uninsured this sort of thing is actually really common. Had an online friend who had to get emergency treatment and they sent him a bill for $20k.

I experienced this personally with my own insurance. My bill was over $20k, and it took a year to convince the insurance company that removing a few feet of my intestines was actually emergency surgery. I ended up paying $800. My roommate in the hospital had no insurance and ended up not paying anything (which I did not begrudge them at all, since the reason for no insurance was debilitating back pain that led to unemployment)

[Aloisius]

> one way for insurance companies to make more money is to have inflated health care prices to justify increasing premiums

This only makes sense if they have no competitors since another insurance company would just steal their customers by having lower rates.

The truth is though, healthcare providers are ultimately responsible for prices.

[swiftcoder]

> This only makes sense if they have no competitors since another insurance company would just steal their customers by having lower rates.

This assumes the competitors are not all colluding to raise prices across the board

[BobbyTables2]

Insurance companies are required to spend something like 80% of premiums on claims.

This sounds like a really good thing, almost everything coming in has to go back out…

What it really means is they love high “allowed” prices. They live on the 20% and want to see the pie as large as possible.

Healthcare costs go up? They raise premiums — win-win.

The road to hell is only paved with good intentions.

[xp84]

> since another insurance company would just steal their customers by having lower

LOL. Meanwhile, in real-life America, there are only four or five major carriers that control the market, and none of them are incentivized to do this "competition" thing you speak of by engaging in damaging price wars. Why would they when continuing to be part of the problem makes them more and more profits each year? See also: military contracting. Do you see them constantly undercutting each other? No, they buy each other, reducing the number of bidders on every contract.

[Izikiel43]

Aren't they doing some kind of turf non compete agreement like isps do?

I had read that comcast won't go into century link territory and viceversa, and something along those lines for the major isps, in order be local monopolies and set prices as they like.

[f1shy]

Fuck those assholes!!! From 20k to 500… how do you name that?

[Izikiel43]

> to justify increasing premiums so they can get 80% of a bigger pie.

Wouldn't it be 20% of a bigger pile?