this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
652 points (96.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43948 readers
1150 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I only posted what I did because your post read like you expected insurance to run by paying out 100% of what they get in. The thread started with general insurance but many zeroed in on health insurance. Yes there are problems, obviously, but certain things like denying claims comes about from many people trying to scam payments and the insurers tightening security too much without enough oversight.
Everybody seems to think there's huge payments going to investors and C level executives but that comes from market confidence. So the stock price rises and those bonuses of stock options appreciate without the company paying a dime.
United Healthcare pulled in $20 BILLION dollars in PROFIT in 2022. The ceo was given $24 million in compensation for that year. Denying claims because of scams? They can afford it.
How was that compensation structured? Was it cash or stock? And how much money would they spend if they didn't act paranoid about false claims? Would that dissolve the 80 billion because it's possible.
Aside from that, did you notice this is a 2 month old post?
About $4 million was non-equity pay. Around $19 million was vested shares. He had a 331 : 1 ratio to the average employee. They can afford to pay people’s urgent medical bills without denying claims. If we are required to have insurance to be able to get BASIC needs met, that insurance better meet those basic needs. It’s especially rough for people with less money and less opportunity. Some people live paycheck to paycheck and their claim being denied means that hospital bill now forces them to choose between rent or food.
I do realize this is a 2 month old thread. There’s like 15 posts in my feed. Normally, I tend to lurk and not comment. Lemmy has a bit of a content drought, and I figured people would be happy with more comments or discussion, even on slightly older threads. If your opinion has changed I’d be happy to discuss that as well.
The point of my stance wasn't to say the world is perfect and nothing should change. Only to try and point out the potential reasons for how things are beyond "they're evil".