How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public

Re:How much health insurers pay for almost everything is abo... by janekm on Sunday July 03, 2022 @12:20PM (#31968817)

The point (in theory) is that in efficient markets you can choose between different companies offering a product/service and that competition drives down prices / costs. The healthcare market in the US is very much not a competitive market (in part due to transparency issues which this is trying to address, in part because of the perverse incentives in the health insurance system).

It's not so easy to have a competitive marketplace for government services (though I would not be surprised if the US saw the emergence of private police forces now, for those parents who actually want police officers that have a duty to protect their kids...)

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Re:How much health insurers pay for almost everything is abo... by feet on Sunday July 03, 2022 @04:26PM (#31970712)

But that doesn't happen in a free market because when money and power gets consolidated, monopolies and oligopolies can do whatever they want to dominate that market.

We have regulatory capture, legislation is written by think tanks like ALECS at the behest of corporations to benefit corporations thereby compounding the problem.

We need actual regulation or a reorganization of corporation ownership. Reorganizing corporations to be owned by the people who work for them rather than shareholders would shift incentives.

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