• julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 hours ago

    Please don‘t extrapolate from the US healthcare system to insurances in general. Insurances collect money from many so in the case something happens to an individual that individual doesn‘t need take the full financial loss. This makes a lot of sense, because it would very inefficient if everyone would save money in order to pay for a potential cancer treatment. Cancer is rare, but in aggregate it is just small amount each month.

    The job of the insurance is to define that monthly amount (which is not trivial to do), collect it, store it and eventually pay it out.

    On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      14 hours ago

      That is the job of the government. Everyone needs healthcare to one degree or another. If we’re all going to be pooling money anyway it shouldn’t be filtered through a for-profit system first.

      On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.

      No I can’t. Everything is too expensive because insurance being involved has inflated the costs.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        The cost of insurance goes down the larger the pool of people. The largest pool in a country is everyone, so like utilities it becomes a natural monopoly.

        Natural monopolies should be the purview of the government as they allow for abuse.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      You would think that. But most decent sized companies self insure. That means they figure out how much to hold in savings to cover potential costs. They probably pay someone for that number. The premium is just to pay the insurance company to manage billing. It is basically an administrative fee. That puts them in the position that employers will choose the insurance company that cost them the least, mainly by denying claims. It’s a system designed to extract as much money as possible from the people and pass it on to the largest shareholders (the board of directors).

    • stickly@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Anything critical to the life of an individual citizen, like health and home insurance, should be publicly run. It just doesn’t make sense for a private company to manage that because their profit motive is in direct opposition to the individual (i.e. they must fight claims and inflate premiums to increase revenue).

      The state loses money anyway if the person is homeless or destitute so they might as well pay out. Yes there are still agents to manage funds and adjust claims and set rates but they’re now operating as impartial public servants instead of antagonists.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      11 hours ago

      It’s all a scam and if it doesn’t feel like that yet just you wait!

      I just bought a new car. Been driving over twenty years, not a single accident or ticket ever in my life. It was a fucking Toyota Corolla. THEY TRIED TO CHARGE ME MORE A MONTH FOR INSURANCE THAN THE FUCKING CAR PAYMENT!

      I was on the phone and I said to geico, you think you deserve a car and a half every fucking month to insure my one car? They told me I would never find a lower rapt that’s what everyone is going to be paying soon.

      I found a lower rate… like 10% of what they quoted. Fucking con artists. Every single person that works in insurance should know they are the enemy.