>The medical field as a whole isn’t generally interested in understanding how medication, only in empirical measuring and qualify the effects.
This is nonsense. Most, if not all professionals are interested in mechanism of action, but without Ms Frizzle, it is extremely difficult and expensive (time and money wise) to figure that out. So while the labs run the experiments with the very limited funding they have, we make do with using the second best thing we have, which are statistics.
>The penalty for not having an ACA-compliant plan or forgoing coverage in 2018 is the greater of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child for a maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of adjusted household income. The percentage penalty is capped at an amount equal to the national average premium for a bronze plan, the minimum coverage available by law
Ah yes, the very hard hitting anti-business rule that says if you don't become a customer of my friend's company, you must give me money. I'm sure the businesses were quivering in their boots when every citizen either became a customer, paid a fine, or became a felon.
I meant that I do not want to deal with taking a kid in and out of car seats, or traveling with car seats, or taking them in and out of cars, for more years of my life.
Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
If their profits are so good, their shares would be worth owning.
Could it be because their profit margins are actually terrible (3% if lucky), and they have to get the price of their product approved by 50 different state government employees, and the federal government constantly changes their customer’s subsidies making revenue and expenses extremely volatile and difficult to forecast?
If you bought shares of those 7 companies in 2010 when the ACA passed, how much would you have today? More or less than if you bought the S&P 500?
If you're looking for policies to blame for insurance companies having a rough 2025-2026, look to the Republican-led efforts cap Medicare fees and alter eligibility requirements.
You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.
Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.
Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.
> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.
I hate Oracle and many of their products and long term it may be a blessing but a lot of conpanies, government agencies, hospitals, etc rely on their diverse suite of enterprise software.
Prevention is not about age related diseases, but early onset cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure caused by alcohol and tobacco use, unhealthy diet, and sedentary lifestyle.
A significant amount of cases could be prevented before they need medical intervention (and put burden on the medical system). There are several researches about this, the number of people with type 2 diabetes doubled in the past decades.
This is why some healthcare systems reward for example doing 10.000 steps a day with lower insurance fees. They recognized they save a huge amount of money if they get people to move.
I assumed the linked article was written by a non American, given the use of kilometers and anecdote of a Brisbane doctor committing suicide.
Although the whole website has 1 post and there’s a prominent advertising link to some doctor book that then links to herbal stuff, so not sure if the whole thing is fake to advertise books.
>You might ask, why can’t you work less? It’s not as easy as that. If I decide to work less, who is going to cover the hospital? If the hospital aren’t employing other doctors, we can’t allow patients to go uncovered. I accept the fact that I have a duty of care to be on call.
Yes, you can allow patients to go uncovered. This hero mentality is what leads the bosses to not properly staff and the politicians to not properly fund in the first place.
It is not an individual’s responsibility to correct a societal failure by hurting themselves.
We saw this during the COVID crisis: declare nurses and doctors "heroes" and then it's ok that they burn out, get PTSD or die due to lack of PPE because "that's just what heroes do"
This is nonsense. Most, if not all professionals are interested in mechanism of action, but without Ms Frizzle, it is extremely difficult and expensive (time and money wise) to figure that out. So while the labs run the experiments with the very limited funding they have, we make do with using the second best thing we have, which are statistics.
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