[HN Gopher] Cost of employer-sponsored health insurance is flatt...
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Cost of employer-sponsored health insurance is flattening worker
wages
Author : clumsysmurf
Score : 17 points
Date : 2024-01-16 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| obesity is probably to blame here. So many chronic health
| problems are probably downstream from obesity.
| ttt3ts wrote:
| The rising costs of healthcare should not be simplified to this
| extreme. Other huge factors: we are getting older on average,
| fewer doctors, bureaucracy, transparency, etc. Further, these
| are heavily entertwined. Been working on costs of healthcare
| for a while and the laymens simplified explanation of the
| problem makes it tough at times.
| dchung333 wrote:
| Uhh...
|
| Researchers also found that Black and Hispanic families lost a
| higher percentage of their wages than white families. By 2019,
| health care premiums as percentage of compensation were 18.5%
| for Asian families, 19.2% for Black families, and 19.8% for
| Hispanic families, compared to 13.8% for white families.
|
| Lower-wage workers are also hit hard by this disparity. In
| 2019, health care premiums as percentage of compensation
| represented 28.5% of compensation for families in the 20th
| percentile of earnings, compared with only 3.9% for families in
| the 95th percentile.
|
| Maybe not the one you want to skip the article for. On another
| note Asian Americans are skinnier than White Americans even
| adjusted for on BMI so obesity is ruled out.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| What those other races do have over whites is probably their
| propensity for Type 2 diabetes though.
|
| Blacks and Asians definitely, possibly for different reasons.
| Not completely certain about hispanics tbf.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Obesity is the symptom. The disease is a bigger, more
| interconnected subject.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It could well be the effect of PFAS, glyphosate, bisphenol A
| or some other industrial chemical that exploded in prevalence
| in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
| dublin wrote:
| Obesity may be a factor, but it's stupid to think that it has
| anything like the impact that boneheaded government policy has
| on healthcare costs. Obamacare was, and is, a disaster, driving
| up costs while producing worse outcomes. (I've worked as a CEO
| in a healthcare tech startup since then, so I've got better
| insight than the average bear.)
|
| The vast majority of people actually _need_ those "junk plans"
| Obama eliminated: Catastrophic coverage plans with fairly high
| deductibles (which HSAs would handle after a few years...)
| gumballindie wrote:
| In the UK you get to pay both public and private healthcare. Both
| of low quality. Private health care relies on "virtual
| appointments" and usually leads to mis diagnostics. It will get
| worse with ai.
| lurking15 wrote:
| > It will get worse with ai.
|
| I've had to self-diagnose and then just plainly guide several
| of my doctors, even specialists, on diagnostics (for evidence)
| and subsequent treatment.
|
| I've had some really lame infections and things going on, and
| most of my GPs over the years would just pin it down to anxiety
| or blindly prescribe antibiotics (made things much worse).
|
| I've lost all faith in the average doctor's expertise, so I
| expect AI must be better but at the same time realize the whole
| system gets inexplicably worse as a human being on the other
| end, despite advances in technology.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Ok, so you've received low quality health care and you think
| a hallucinating bot is the solution? What if we, you know,
| start hiring competent people? Or change the system to allow
| them to become competent?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| ... but it's not like they're just stealing the money from you,
| you are getting health insurance, which has a lot of value.
| There's another story going around that if you add benefits like
| health insurance not to mention programs like food stamps the gap
| between rich and poor hasn't increased as much as you'd think
| otherwise.
| dublin wrote:
| No, it has little to no value at all until something really
| catastrophic happens to you. Paying thousands of dollars a year
| for a "free" annual checkup is NOT delivering "a lot of value".
| It's been much more of just a money pit.
|
| Over my career, I am upside-down on my healthcare costs to the
| tune of six figures - and that's after kidney stone surgery
| some years back...) I think I'll pass on succumbing to cancer
| to try to recover a bit more, though...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's tax time now so I get a wonderful breakdown of how much
| my company paid for my and my family's insurance (over $25k)
| and I also get to put together how much we spent out of
| pocket on health services (over $5k for a bog-standard
| pregnancy). If this is supposed to be some sort of bargain or
| good deal, I'm missing it. In the decade prior to this, my
| total premiums must have been over $200k for literally no
| usage.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I agree with you in principle, provided you have the time and
| resources to make the insurance company actually pay out what
| they're supposed to. It's been more my experience that the
| insurance company pays _most_ charges and then you have to
| dispute one or two denials to the tune of a few hundred per ED
| visit. Or they have accounting errors or other problems that
| result in you being billed past your out of pocket max or your
| coinsurance. And so on.
|
| It's not like it's a free market because you can't just kick
| them to the curb a month later like you can with car or
| homeowner's insurance.
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