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A comment on Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings in pricing by procedure. Parent comment

Re:Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings ... by monocasa on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @04:23PM (#28621276)
Because the premiums even for the larger risk pool can be negotiated with the insurance company. And if you suck at negotiating (like our HR), then you can accept at face value the arguments the insurance company makes about how much you're costing them, and how they'll just drop you if you don't accept higher premiums.

And I'm going to guess that your businesses had very, very few employees? To the point of not being worth negotiating with from the insurance company's perspective?

And Kaiser isn't run like most insurance companies.

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Re:Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings ... by lotsofpulp on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @04:31PM (#28621381)
Kaiser is short for Kaiser Family Foundation, which compiles nice reports about healthcare in the US. Using their reports does not have anything to do with Kaiser the company. Although their insurance side is similar to any other health insurer.

>And I'm going to guess that your businesses had very, very few employees? To the point of not being worth negotiating with from the insurance company's perspective?

Yes, but that was my point about businesses being able to just buy the health insurance plans available on healthcare.gov. Earlier you mentioned the healthcare.gov plans were:

>Which are stupid expensive for anyone much above the poverty level.

But the data does not support that. Average annual employer sponsored insurance is $7,675 for single PPO coverage in 2019:

https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2019-summary-of-find...

And average lowest cost monthly gold premium on healthcare.gov is $516 ($6k annual) in 2019:

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/average-ma...

So employers can probably save money going to the healthcare.gov plans, albeit with higher out of pocket maximums probably. But at least a couple kids with cancer would not throw off the premiums.

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