In the company’s first earnings call since the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, Group CEO Andrew Witty acknowledges shortcomings of the U.S. health care landscape.
The concept of insurance makes sense - pooling risk so that everyone can share a little pain all the time, so that unlikely but catastrophic events don’t wipe individuals out. Making this arrangement for-profit is asinine.
Insurance generally, yes. But health insurance, no, especially when it could be funded by taxes like in other countries and still have that same element of shared risk, but without the perverse incentive to let people die just to create a little more profit for the precious shareholders.
Which I appreciate is what you said, but I thought it bore repeating. Other forms of insurance I suspect would be harder to nationalise, but in theory there’s no reason they couldn’t.
Directly government-funded healthcare and government-run single payer insurance are essentially the same thing. There’s some rationale for keeping the government-run single payer system (whether you call it insurance or not) at arm’s length from the sitting government to prevent too much political chaotic nonsense each time another government takes power, but they achieve the same things in terms of health care delivery and risk management.
US health insurers literally offer zero social benefit. They should not exist as the entire industry in harmful rent seeking.
The concept of insurance makes sense - pooling risk so that everyone can share a little pain all the time, so that unlikely but catastrophic events don’t wipe individuals out. Making this arrangement for-profit is asinine.
Insurance generally, yes. But health insurance, no, especially when it could be funded by taxes like in other countries and still have that same element of shared risk, but without the perverse incentive to let people die just to create a little more profit for the precious shareholders.
Which I appreciate is what you said, but I thought it bore repeating. Other forms of insurance I suspect would be harder to nationalise, but in theory there’s no reason they couldn’t.
Directly government-funded healthcare and government-run single payer insurance are essentially the same thing. There’s some rationale for keeping the government-run single payer system (whether you call it insurance or not) at arm’s length from the sitting government to prevent too much political chaotic nonsense each time another government takes power, but they achieve the same things in terms of health care delivery and risk management.