Do health insurers increase the cost of health care or hold a lid on it?

[ThomWV]

What is the effect of health insurers on the cost of the health care that they insure. Does their propensity to deny coverage and underpay claims help hold down rises in cost or does their willingness to pay sometimes ridiculous sums for seemingly insignificant items lead to general overcharging - or something in between?

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. Collusion between the insurance corporations and corporate hospitals have a lot to do with it.

Bill Frist didn't make millions from butchering cats, ya know. The uber-corrupt pharmaceutical industry has a lot to do with it as well.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. Well, the head of United Health in 2006 got a severance package over 1BILLION

does that answer your question?

How many procedures would that have covered? How many premiums? Yeah, they're trying to hold down costs!!:eyes:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/5389246.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. wrong question.

first, by forcing you to pay their (big insurance) salaries, profits, bonuses, salaries, advertising, lobbying, bribes of congress & senate, bribes of local and state officials, and more, you have already increased the amount that you and I pay for health care by 40%. BEFORE the first exam, EMT care, office visit, triage, or aspirin.
next, they increase their own profits by screwing the doctors and hospitals, playing games with numbers, "average community costs," "approved treatements," and more, forcing the docs, rehab centers, hospitals and other care givers to hire staff simply to deal with the insurers. Net benefit to the patient? STILL ZIP.
Finally, you get to see a doc. Now, you pay INFLATED prices, because insurers have increased the cost of business to the docs and hospitals so much, that they are fucked unless they do so.

I'm sorry. What was your question?

[Canuckistanian]

4. You got it

Says it all.

[Mike 03]

5. I don't know. You know the outrageous prices we pay for medications.

What do you think?

I would respect your opinion at this point, since this is a topic you post about over and over again. You must know something we don't.

I have posted about the cost of drugs to fight cancer, and the cost of drugs to fight migraines.

Please, tell us if you know. If you have researched this and have some particular ideas in mind as to how we need to address these issues, please let us know.

What is the answer to your question?

[AndyTiedye]

6. They Hold Down the Rates THEY Have to Pay

The insurers negotiate special rates with providers that are much less than their regular rates.
The sky is the limit for the what individuals have to pay if their insurance runs out.

[rgbecker]

7. Long term, health insurers benefit from increasing health care costs.

Increased costs allow insurers to increase their premiums by that amount plus the 30-40% cost of their "Services". That increase in revenue and subsequent income shows up as company growth and thus stock price growth. The people running these companies are spending all their time dreaming up ways to grow their business and so they are happy to see the cost of health care go up and will pay claims in such a way to insure it does. How will they do that? By paying claims freely and without much inspection on the whole, encouraging expensive procedures like colostomies, MRIs etc, but by also refusing claims from individuals, who are on their way "out" and likely to just cost the company more in claims as their condition worsens.

Key to this success is the uneven market of health care insurance which is provided by a third party, usually an employer, rather than being purchased directly by the potential claimant. When was the last time you compared your insurance company with another. Truth is, its not your decision, unless you are willing to leave your job for another which uses another insurer.

Most western countries control this fiasco using the government. Why can't we?

[Old Codger]

8. HAH

If you analyze what the do you will see that they really don't do much at all, they are a middle man between us and the Drs. and hospitals, they pay them, but they also add their profit and expenses into the mix and charge us... years ago you could make all your own arrangements and you would be charged on a sliding scale based on what you earned. Another thing that was their when you did have a group policy was if you had an ongoing medical problem and were under treatment for it if you lost your job the insurance company HAD to continue to pay for that treatment irrespective of your working for that company or not. At one time they were actually a good thing but that is long gone.