6 ms·
Did you know insurance works by pooling and sharing the risk amongst a group? The larger the group to share the risk and cost, the more efficient it becomes.
by jjav 4d ago
Did you know insurance works by pooling and sharing the risk amongst a group?
The larger the group to share the risk and cost, the more efficient it becomes.
If you try to buy health insurance for all your employees as a tiny employer, costs are higher than if some employer with hundreds of thousands of employees seeks to buy the same insurance.
Because that huge employer is sharing the risk of some employee having to get very expensive treatment across all those employees.
You know what is the largest group available? All the citicens of the country in a single insurance plan. That is the point of maximum efficiency (least cost). As a bonus, you can remove all the middlemen of insurance companies, further increasing efficiency.
- charlieyu1 4d agoSo why is someone who is not an employer, subsiding other employers in their purchase of employee insurance?
- mitxela 4d agoWhat does that even mean? The insurance is for the person who gets a hand cut off in an industrial accident. It's not for the employer.
- charlieyu1 4d agoSo it is the employer who has to pay for it, not other citizens.
- jjav 3d agoWho pays is not that simple. The employee pays for their insurance, out of their total comp package. Typically that gets divided into a part the employer pays behind the scenes and a portion that gets declared on the employees W2 and then deducted right back out as medical insurance. Different companies use different proportions for these two parts, but in the end it's all the same, it is coming from the total comp package of the employee. So the employee pays for it. But of course all that money (the whole total comp package, not just the insurance part) is really coming from the employer. So I guess you could say the employer is paying for it since that's where the money originates. But.. the employer isn't printing that money out of thin air, it is actually coming from their revenue, so it originates from the customers of that company. So in a very real way, it is the customers of the company that truly pay for that health insurance, in the form of higher prices of all the products they buy. This is obviously true, in that if the company didn't have to pay for any health insurance for any employee, they could have the same profit with lower prices for the consumer. So it all comes full circle. Employer-provided health insurance is just a tax on all consumers in the form of higher prices on all products & services.
- what 4d agoDid you know that you could charge people different rates for insurance based on risk profiles or deny them outright? You used to be able to anyway. I’m fine subsidizing people of a similar risk profile that have a hit by a bus moment. I’m not fine subsidizing the obese and chronically ill.
- lokar 3d agoThat makes you very out of step with most Americans. You choose to pick on the obese because it’s more socially acceptable, but also people with cancer, kidney disease, etc. Your position would be considered deeply immoral by most people (rightly). Maybe spend less time on-line and interact with regular people.