Afaict, the problem here isn’t capitalism, but protectionism.
Laws limit how insurance companies can make money, so they use the tools they have access to. Likewise, we’ve prioritized employer sponsored insurance over customer selected insurance (government insurance is a separate beast), so insurance companies only need to impress HR, not end customers, and HR likes bullet points and lower costs, and don’t care about fine print. It’s the same reason why my employer sponsored 401k is more expensive than my IRA, despite offering fewer features. Employers don’t have your interests in mind, they want to provide the cheapest benefits they can that attract the talent they need. Almost everyone would be better off if they shopped on their own, but that’s not financially prudent because you’d have to forego tax benefits and employer contributions.
When you manipulate the market like this, this is what we get. Insurance is already pretty anti-consumer, and we’ve eliminated most of the little accountability insurance companies have to end customers. That’s not how capitalism should work, and the solution is to either let capitalism work (remove insurance decisions from employers, let customers change, just like auto or home insurance), or to decide that insurance should be publicly funded. The current system is the worst of both worlds (government meddling and capitalist profit maximization).
Neither is solved by killing one of the players, that just makes the player a victim.
I’m so unenamored with unfettered capitalism these days. This shit is unsustainable.
Afaict, the problem here isn’t capitalism, but protectionism.
Laws limit how insurance companies can make money, so they use the tools they have access to. Likewise, we’ve prioritized employer sponsored insurance over customer selected insurance (government insurance is a separate beast), so insurance companies only need to impress HR, not end customers, and HR likes bullet points and lower costs, and don’t care about fine print. It’s the same reason why my employer sponsored 401k is more expensive than my IRA, despite offering fewer features. Employers don’t have your interests in mind, they want to provide the cheapest benefits they can that attract the talent they need. Almost everyone would be better off if they shopped on their own, but that’s not financially prudent because you’d have to forego tax benefits and employer contributions.
When you manipulate the market like this, this is what we get. Insurance is already pretty anti-consumer, and we’ve eliminated most of the little accountability insurance companies have to end customers. That’s not how capitalism should work, and the solution is to either let capitalism work (remove insurance decisions from employers, let customers change, just like auto or home insurance), or to decide that insurance should be publicly funded. The current system is the worst of both worlds (government meddling and capitalist profit maximization).
Neither is solved by killing one of the players, that just makes the player a victim.