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If you agree murder is bad, but you don't view insurance corporations denying critical medicine to people knowing full well they will die as a result, as a form of murder, then you don't in fact believe murder is bad. You believe rich people should be able to kill poor people and you should learn to be honest with yourself.

Bas Schouten

@QasimRashid This is obviously complete bullshit. Insurance companies everywhere, as well as organizations like NICE are always denying lifesaving care to people. Their whole -job- is to decide what life saving care is cost effective. As we have to distribute a limited supply of care over the population.

Could you argue that in the US there are too many people grifting profits from this? Sure. But denying some care and granting others - that's their job.

@Schouten_B @QasimRashid is it possible to justify a limited supply of care in a country as predatory with its client states, and thus rich, as the US? They're sucking my country dry, yet we have a pretty decent public health system, how can they not?

@ciatmusings @QasimRashid The US spends more on health care per capita than any other country in the world. The insurance or spending isn't the problem. The grifters everywhere else in the system are. The pharmaceutical patent system, excessive diagnistic tests, the debt collectors. And let's not forget the terribly unhealthy lifestyle weighing in the system.

@Schouten_B @QasimRashid "Their whole -job- is to decide what life saving care is cost effective." Cost effective for whom? UHC et al are now, and have been, denying care across the board to increase their profits and their profits have increased.

@gpilz @QasimRashid UHCs margins are around 6%. That's a little too high, but it's also not crazy (I feel 2-3% is a much more reasonable target, depending a little bit on inflation), it's not going to significantly reduce the available care.

Should it be lower? Yes. But the US health care system issues primarily don't lie with the insurance companies. The rot is primarily in other parts of the system.

@Schouten_B @QasimRashid I don't agree that margins are the correct way to measure health insurance companies. Many things can impact margins including staffing, compensation, etc.

How many people were denied treatments, procedures, medicine, etc. that falls within the range of "common practice" in other industrialized countries?

@gpilz @QasimRashid The Essential Health Benefits -have- to be covered under the ACA. For other treatments it becomes more complicated, and it differs per country. The Netherlands essential benefits (the ones all insurers have to reimburse) for example do not reimburse lymph duct reconstruction after lymphadenectomy. The Germany essential benefits to include it. Who's wrong and who's right? Hard to say. QOL improvements are real.

@Schouten_B @QasimRashid
It is not the job of an insurance administrator to determine what medica, is necessary. That would be the treating doctor.

@66gardeners @QasimRashid It is the job of an insurance administrator, and of course to some extent the IOM/SecHHS (or in the UK the NICE, Germany the G-BA, etc) to decide which treatments are worth the money. A doctor decides only if a treatment is appropriate for a patient's situation, not whether the treatment is cost-effective for society as a whole.

Plenty of millions of dollar cancer therapies that no industrialized nation pays for but a doctor could reasonable say are life-extending.