Comment by bitcurious
1 day ago
> To some extent this has helped with health insurance. Each year I get a check back from my insurer saying they didn't spend enough on my care vs my premiums.
This has baffled me ever since Obamacare was first passed - it seems that each year the insurance companies have an incentive to drive up the cost of healthcare, since that’s how they earn more money in absolute terms. Is it not so?
That is so, to an extent. But it's balanced against employer demands to hold down medical costs because they pay most of the bills. If your HR department can save 5% on employee medical costs by switching from Blue Cross to Cigna next year they'll absolutely do it.
Any idea why Obamacare didn't follow the European model? Other than the freedom argument
People on HN always talk about European health insurance seems like an easier route than to murder people lol
First of all there isn’t one “European model”, every country in Europe has its own system.
To answer the substantive point, it’s extremely difficult to pass substantial laws in the US due to the structure of its political system. The mandatory coalition of the president + 60% of the senate + 50% of the House of Representatives is a much higher bar than any other democracy. So laws aren’t written to be optimal policy, they are written to satisfy this extremely high coalition requirement — Obamacare in particular was very fundamentally weakened from some of the more expansive initial proposals to address the concerns of one or two senators and get them on board.
but people always talk about how insurance is guaranteed in europe something must be working if gunning down a CEO is pro the people wouldn't copying one of the European countries be even more pro the people?
what makes senators hate something that is pro the people? wouldn't that give them better ratings? I come from a dictatorship so sorry if this is a dumb question
5 replies →