Many fact checking sites are actually heavily opinionated. To the point where even demonstrably true facts are labeled as "half-true" due to opinionated objections. Frequently, the veneer of calling oneself a "fact-checking" site lets them get away with some pretty significant bending of the truth.
It looks like this article isn't much different. It doesn't actually refute the claim that less regulation would result in lower healthcare premiums:
> In states with unregulated markets, “you could create a situation where you are selling very low-priced policies to healthy people without much [insurance] protection whatsoever,” Blumberg, who was a health policy adviser to President Bill Clinton’s administration, said in a phone interview. “But that ignores the fact that … what you’re doing is driving up the premiums to impossible levels” in states that want to have insurance regulations.
So removal of regulations would actually make healthcare premiums cheaper in the de-regulated areas. Potentially this makes the insurance more expensive in places that do have regulations, but it's actually agreeing with the claim that deregulation can make insurance cheaper.
> It’s a “risk-segmentation strategy,” she said, where eventually the healthy people are pulled into one set of plans and those with health problems are left in another. Premiums would go up so much in states with regulated plans that it would become impossible for them to sustain those regulations.
> Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said that the lion’s share of a premium is the money a plan has to pay for medical claims, as well as utilization. Selling insurance across state lines wouldn’t change the price of medical services — as Antos said — but if insurance companies could deny coverage or charge more for health conditions, a carrier could “push down on utilization by screening out sick people” and then, “they can charge a lower premium.”
Again, the article does admit that premiums would likely go down with less regulation.
It looks like your article isn't actually disproving the claim that insurance premiums would go down with less regulation. In fact it repeatedly does say that premiums would indeed go down, but that it would result in other changes like different coverage from what people are used to, and potentially making it harder for unhealthy people to get insurance.
I agree that everyone is biased. But there has just been an incredible amount of debate on this issue. For OP to state that he's discovered the solution is a bit disingenuous.
This hardly qualifies as a source, it's just a page of "Myth vs. Reality" bullet points with no data backing it up, nor any references to sources. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners is going to have more than a little conflict on interest here. Maybe what they're saying is true, but I'd need actual data if I wanted to believe them.
What they're saying breaches some of the most widely understood patterns of markets: that deliberate interference with markets through regulation drives up prices. Sometimes there are justifiable reasons for doing so, like making sure products are safe. If you mandate that all cars need airbags, prices are going to go up because now every car has the cost of a few airbags on top of whatever it cost previously. This claim that regulating the insurance market somehow keeps prices low goes into the same bucket of dubious claims like San Francisco progressives claiming that constructing new housing actually drives prices up and other claims of that sort.
To be clear, the NAIC isn't an industry group - it's made up of insurance regulators. I suppose the argument could be made that they have a conflict of interest in that they'd benefit from increased regulation from an "empire-building" perspective. But I've never gotten the impression that that motivates their decisions in practice. (I'm a former actuary and still work in the insurance industry.)
It's likely true that health insurance premiums would be lower, on average, in an unregulated free market. It's also true that people with pre-existing conditions would be denied coverage or charged substantially higher premiums in an unregulated free market. The current approach to subsidizing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions is less efficient than a tax-and-spend approach would be (see, e.g., [0]), but it's more politically viable since it doesn't show up in government bugets.
> To be clear, the NAIC isn't an industry group - it's made up of insurance regulators. I suppose the argument could be made that they have a conflict of interest in that they'd benefit from increased regulation from an "empire-building" perspective.
Having 50 different markets to regulate sure seems like it'd result in a lot more demand fore insurance regulators than one market to regulate.
> It's likely true that health insurance premiums would be lower, on average, in an unregulated free market. It's also true that people with pre-existing conditions would be denied coverage or charged substantially higher premiums in an unregulated free market. The current approach to subsidizing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions is less efficient than a tax-and-spend approach would be (see, e.g., [0]), but it's more politically viable since it doesn't show up in government bugets.
Sure, there may be people who find the reasons for regulating the market to be more compelling enough to justify regulation. But that doesn't excuse the mental gymnastics required to convince oneself that this sort of regulation will somehow not only reduce costs but actually make things cheaper. This kind of thinking led us to having the poorest and unhealthiest patients subsidized by the rest of the nation - effectively a levying a flat tax on most insurance customers - and patting ourselves on the back as though this was a progressive change.
Also, your source is pretty dubious. I'm very skeptical of how analyzing the cost of helicopter ambulances specifically is supposed to be a good means of trying to back up the claim whether subsidy is less efficient than paying through taxes. Contrary to popular belief, most universal healthcare programs (e.g. most the ones in Western Europe, the UK being the notable exceptions) still leave the actual healthcare up to the private market.
The thing that feels bizarre whenever this comes up is the US willingness to pretend the many dozen cheaper systems that provide universal coverage doesn't exist.
The US spends more tax money on Medicare and Medicaid alone than what some countries spend per capita on providing universal healthcare..
Maybe copy one of the systems proven to work. They come in many flavours, many of which do include private insurers and healthcare providers that do just fine.
And the further reduced the tone of ambitiously taking any questions (especially on HN) the more you sound like somebody who migrated from 4chan to mess with us
Doesn't OP have the responsibility to at least admit that his main suggestion is extremely common and well researched, and to explain what gives him special insight or authority?
I made the mistake of online ordering from Home Depot and they "conveniently" shipped from a local store. Only problem is that they apparently have a habit of reusing SKUs and sent me an older model that I didn't order.
Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.
>Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.
Let's not pretend Amazon are innocent of fuck ups like this. I'm a semi regular shopper with Amazon (uk) and in the last 12 months I've had:
- used products sold as new
- products sent by Amazon's own courier service for "next day delivery" show up after 3 days
- flat out wrong items sent
- previews for books sent in place of actual books
- received knock off cables when ordering manufacturer cables.
That's not to consider the mess of trying to order goods from Amazon and figuring out when they'll arrive. Searching for "prime" or sold by Amazon doesn't actually guarantee next day delivery on rh item, nor does it guarantee the item will be correct.
Their only saving grace is that every time I have a problem, I can resolve it with live chat, they send a replacement and a courier picks up the old item from my office (if they even bother asking for it back)
With Home Depot their phone support was 100% useless and I had to physically go to the store the item shipped from. I made sure the new product was on the shelf and tried to do a simple exchange. Unfortunately the duplicate SKU was a problem and the price had increased since I paid for the order so the drone wanted me to pay the difference. That wasn't going to happen so my time had to be further wasted arguing with them over their mistake.
Yeah that's awful, and like I said, Amazon's policy of "refund and we'll pick it up" if there's a problem has kept me shopping there.
My latest issue was a clearly used item being sold as new, and it was damaged. The price had increased since I ordered it, and with one live chat they couriered me a replacement, and picked up the old one, at no cost to me.
I tried to order a few boxes of hardwood flooring from Home Depot one time and despite being in stock at the store 20 miles away from me they somehow managed to outsource delivery to some local company that delayed delivery repeatedly because of "weather" for four months. This local company never picked up the phone or returned emails.
I had to do a chargeback as Home Depot refused to refund me, they seemed confused as to where the shipment was. I don't think HD or any company run in the HD mold will ever be competitive if these are the outcomes.
I've had pretty much the same experience with Amazon (for a "sold and fulfilled by Amazon") item. Except that Amazon kept lying to me about pretty much everything, from whether they've even shipped an item to whether I could get a refund of Prime membership to a lot of other things.
They aren't any better, and their customer "service" is pretty much limited to "throw the customer another month of Prime (it's worthless anyway) and hope they go away".
I learned recently that only about 5% of Walmart revenue is from e-commerce.
The industry average for a brick and mortar is just about 10%.
They don’t do much online revenue because they don’t invest in growing it. They don’t invest in growing it because it’s too small a portion of their business to warrant investment.
Online first companies are eating brick and mortar alive because of this.
I know same day shipping was offered on Google Express, but it seemed very rare (at least in my area) so I was never able to use it. This was despite having locations of many of the partner stores within walking distance, so it seemed to defeat the purpose of taking advantage of the geographic coverage of existing physical retail.
I find this pretty interesting. On the one hand, it's similar to the situation a lot of lenders are in. But on the other hand Tether isn't owed that money back as far as I understand it. You also have the fact that a lot of crypto people are very against fractional reserve.
Interesting idea. Is there a description of the tech behind it somewhere? Also, seemed to take a while to generate, not sure if it's getting stressed with visitors.
It still seems pretty stressed. I only wanted to see some examples; I did not want to enter fresh sentences myself. If you could add a section to your website to show previous queries and results across all simulations, that might be good enough for most visitors.
Sure. It's supposed to take 20 seconds to generate all the examples even normally. Anyways here's an example:
Sentence: The University of Notre Dame in Indiana is donating $100,000 toward the renovation of the landmark Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, according to a statement post on the school’s website today.
Headlines:
1) Notre Dame Catholic University to renovate iconic Notre Dame Cathedral to $100,000
2) $100k donation for renovation of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
3) Notre Dame University to donate $100K toward renovation to new Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
4) Notre Dame University funds ’restoration of historical historic building’
5) Notre Dame pledges $100,000 to refurbish Notre Dame Cathedral as part of renovation
6) Indiana University to contribute $100,000 to renovation of historic Notre Dame Cathedral
7) Indiana University pledges to support Notre Dame Cathedral restoration
8) University of Notre Dame renovates Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
9) Notre Dame Catholic school funds renovation of Notre Dame Cathedral in the Parisian city
10) Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris donated $100,000 towards renovation
That Bork theory is nutty. Imagine thinking that businesses don't take calculated risks. There is a conveyor belt of judges supported and moved forward by big money corporate interests.
