“Tesla is going down the toilet” is not insider information.

I am very suspicious about this claim. Firing thousands of air traffic controllers in a few days is actually quite difficult, especially for someone as incompetent as Trump. Yet another benefit of union membership!

fired thousands of FAA employees

Where did you read this? The article does not say he fired thousands of FAA employees.

The hospital in this story, MD Anderson, is also a nonprofit. In fact it’s part of the University of Texas, a state-run school. So nobody profited from what happened here.

And in general, insurance companies have an antagonistic relationship with health care providers. Because when insurance companies deny care, health care providers lose money.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Pike’s health insurer through his employer, had declined to cover the roughly $40,000 treatment.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois is a nonprofit, so it turns out nonprofits deny care too.

Any state can abolish DST on its own, some have already done so.

There was a bill in Congress to put the entire country on permanent DST (which states can’t do on their own). It died because (a) some states don’t want permanent DST, and (b) doctors have found that permanent DST is less healthy than no DST.

In fact, Congress already tried permanent DST briefly in the 70s. Some children were killed in early morning traffic accidents, schools responded by shifting their winter hours later, and the public generally turned against it.

They found a handwritten manifesto on him. It would be very easy to prove that it’s not his handwriting, if it actually were planted.

they spend 80% of all premium revenue on care

True. Actually, large insurance companies need to spend 85%.

an incentive for insurance companies to pay higher costs for care so they can make more profit

That doesn’t make sense. Insurance companies have to pay health care providers for care. The more care costs, the less money is left for insurance companies. In fact, if health care costs are too high then the insurance company can go bankrupt.

That said, the converse is not true: insurance companies don’t directly profit by cutting health care spending. That’s because they need to use 80% or 85% of their revenue on care. However, cutting health care spending (by delay, denial, etc) allows insurance companies to lower their premiums.

And since people often want the cheapest possible insurance, lower premiums means more customers, which means more total revenue, which ultimately does mean higher profits.

Of course, the key assumption here is that customers will accept worse care if it means lower premiums. This is one of the few industries where you literally get what you pay for.

Neither UHC nor Anthem have anywhere near a 90 billion dollar net profit.

GTFO with that. Lmao

Anthem’s policy wasn’t going to leave patients in agony. It was going to cap how much anesthesiologists could bill.

There are already plenty of billing caps in medicine. Medicare has a cap for every single patient in the hospital.

When a patient reaches the cap they aren’t dumped to the curb in agony, that would be an instant malpractice lawsuit. Instead, the hospital works for free. The same thing (in principle) happens when your plumber offers a flat rate for a job but it takes a lot longer than expected.

That’s why a large number of hospital patients actually lose money for the hospital, but the hospital (and presumably these anesthesiologists) make up for it on the other patients. In the end it all averages out.

how come they are so fucking profitable.

UHC has a profit margin around 6%, whereas Anthem’s is around 3%. Those are not particularly high. For comparison, Toyota (8%) and Home Depot (10%) are both more profitable.

Insurers already divide providers into in-network and out-of-network. They deny or pay very little for out-of-network providers, because they want their policyholders to stay in-network. The reason they prefer in-network providers is that they negotiate reduced/discounted rates with those providers.

Sure, they could outright hire those providers as employees, but that means they would have to start paying their entire salaries rather than just discounted fee-for-service. And that’s not necessarily a good idea, because health care clinics are not very profitable. Basically, this is the same question facing everyone who has to choose between hiring an employee and paying a subcontractor.

That said, some insurers do run their own clinics and hospitals, notably Kaiser Permanente.

Well, when you deny a claim from a clinic you own then it’s very likely your “savings” are losses for your clinic.

They’ll take the savings and issue a stock buyback.

They can’t do that.

The ACA requires large health insurers to spend 85% of their income on health care providers. If they don’t (eg because they start paying less to anesthesiologists) then the savings must be used to reduce premiums or give rebates to customers.

Did the author of that article even read their own links?

Most insured adults (81%) give their health insurance an overall rating of “excellent” or “good,”

Most of the links they cite are about health care in general, not health insurance.

Agree. DST is set by an act of Congress, and it can only be changed by an act of Congress.

I bought it used, so it was way more affordable than you might think.

Rivian

Former owner here. Such a relief to be rid of it. Never again as long as Musk remains at Tesla.

In the US, median household income was $80,610 in 2023. So it’s not surprising that 55% of holiday travelers have household income under $100K.