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A comment on Affordable Care. Parent comment

Re:Affordable Care by 0xfeba on Friday January 13, 2017 @03:57PM (#13394635)
> Also, if someone doesn't have insurance, the fact that the hospital puts you on the hook for the full bill is ridiculous. Insurance isn't paying 100%, they are discounted crazy amounts, even only paying 20% in some cases. But you don't get this discount from the hospital. If you show up without insurance, you will be charged the full amount, less what you can negotiate on the spot. And most people don't know they can even try to negotiate it.

And what happens with the majority of people who don't have insurance, they don't pay it. So the costs get eaten by the hospital and eventually by everyone else that can pay.

In that respect, we have socialized healthcare already. It's just a horrible implementation.

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Re:Affordable Care by redler on Friday January 13, 2017 @04:15PM (#13394770)
> the majority of people who don't have insurance, they don't pay it

Exactly so. They don't pay it because they can't. And they're ruined. Even people who have insurance -- good insurance -- can be ruined. This system is the ultimate form of price discrimination, perfectly tuned to extract the optimal amount of money from the consumer who has literally no pricing information, and maximize the profits of the business. When insurance companies pay out, it's referred to as "loss".

Markets and the profit motive may be "efficient", but they're not optimizing for health outcomes, and certainly not optimizing for morality. Insurance companies ultimately cannot be part of the equation.

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