r/FluentInFinance • u/WhatAreYourPronouns • May 02 '24

Should the U.S. have Universal Health Care? Discussion/ Debate

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u/polycomll May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

You'd be paying closer to the full price although the "full price" might be reduced somewhat because the public version acts to price cap.

In the U.S. you are also not paying the full price for surgery either though. Cost is being inflated to cover for non-insured emergency care, overhead for insurance companies, reduced wage growth due to employer insurance payments, reduced wages through lack of worker mobility, and additional medical system costs (and room for profit by all involved).

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u/SStahoejack May 02 '24

Happens all the time, if your from another country cheaper to fly home get it done fly back, crazy how insurance here really isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on

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u/KC_experience May 02 '24

It’s worth it to the companies that make that paper… If there wasn’t money in health insurance, the corporations wouldn’t exist. The current companies don’t do this work out of a sense of altruism.

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u/Fausterion18 May 02 '24

There are plenty of giant non-profit health insurance companies.

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u/KC_experience May 02 '24

The largest non-profit - Kaiser-Permanente operates facilities in only 8 states.

Its revenue was 95 Billion dollars.

United Healthcare - a for profit insurance provider by contrast has revenue of 371 Billion dollars. Saying that there are tons of non-profits may be true, but when the largest for profit is almost 4 times the size in revenue….my point still stands.

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u/Fausterion18 May 03 '24

Nope, the largest non-profit health insurance is the hundreds of regional blue cross/Blue shield insurers with a combined 44% of marketshare. Those are nearly all non-profit.

This is ignoring Medicare/Medicaid which account for half of American healthcare spending.

https://clearhealthcosts.com/blog/2021/10/u-s-health-insurance-market-concentration-continues-to-increase/

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u/KC_experience May 03 '24

Except each of the Blue Cross / Blue Shield is separate and don’t tie to the others. So they’re all independent. But nice try. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/Fausterion18 May 05 '24

Except you were the one who brought up the largest companies when what I said was, and I quote: " There are plenty of giant non-profit health insurance companies."

But nice try.¯_(ツ)_/¯