Comment by jorvi
6 hours ago
> Healthcare costs are high because of insurance companies and private equity, not doctors and hospitals.
It is actually the opposite.
UnitedHealth, one of the 'worst' insurers in terms of denials, has a profit margin of ~5% [0]. It is mainly the providers that overcharge, under the guise of "the less and lower we bill, the less and lower insurance pays us".
Insurance only works if there is at least as much going into the pot as is going out. What do you think would happen if insurances weren't denial hawks?
Get angry at your doctor for overcharging you whilst using insurance companies as the heel.
[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-g...
The reason UnitedHealth has such a low profit margin is that their profit margin is capped by the ACA's Medical Loss Ratio provision. They fraudulently get diagnoses for their insured patients to upcode and incur more charges to Medicare Advantage that they can collect their profit from. Any doctor could have told you this has been going on for years. https://www.google.com/search?q=UnitedHealthmedicare+advanta...
If the government were the insurer, it would not have the same incentives to commit this fraud.
As a person who moved to US from Europe recently I can say that prices charged by US healthcare providers are ridiculous - all overpriced 10-20x compared to my home country.