You have no evidence for this argument. It's just vibes. The numbers here are stark. It's not like it's close, between providers and insurers. Insurers are almost literally a rounding error.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You asserted "the macro NHE table from last year… simply refutes the argument you're trying to make", but that claim is false. You are welcome to answer the question about where "doc spends two hours on phone arguing with UHC" falls in the expenditure list; it's not insurance, but it's caused by it.

> Insurers are almost literally a rounding error.

Again, the argument is that the raw cost of health insurance does not reflect its externalities imposed on the other items in your list; that insurers drive up hospital and practice costs, as they have to staff up enormous amounts of staff and expensive physician time to deal with the insurer.

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tptacek 2 hours ago | parent [-]

$360B in admin/net cost of insurance. $2.5T in practitioner costs.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> $2.5T in practitioner costs.

Some of which is those practicioners' admin cost from dealing with the insurers. (And, you know, doing the actual work.)

Denials are nice and cheap. Fighting them is not.

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

You stated this claim upthread, for the record, and tracked down an actual Canada vs. US statistic on this, which turned out to account for roughly 3.6% of total provider inpatient/outpatient expense.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

In 2011, when my premiums were $1600 a month. I dropped my plan when it hit $4900/month to go on my employer’s crappier plan.

And as noted in that other conversation, this is one aspect of many. UHC isn’t pursuing vertical integration for funsies.

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tptacek an hour ago | parent [-]

That's not an argument; it's just vibes. Whenever we get actual numbers to look at, your arguments fall apart.

Again, I want to be clear: I'm not here to defend the American health system. It's a disaster. It's just clear to me you don't have a bead on why that is. (The answer is artificial scarcity of practitioners, overprescription, and lack of price transparency).

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

> That's not an argument; it's just vibes.

So is “insurance doesn’t have any externalities that might hide in my very broadly categorized numbers”.

	▲	tptacek an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Non-falsifiable argument is non-falsifiable. I could literally present you evidence that 2.2T of our medical expenditure is due to a price-fixing ring in syringes, and you'd still be able to use the same argument.