Thread regarding Elevance Health (Anthem) layoffs

@jy I could not agree with you more. No notes.

Medicare "works" because only a small portion of the population are on it, while the much larger proportion of the country pays for it with working salaries.

It is still underfunded and doomed in its current state.

@jw Thank you for supporting my comment. To expound even further, as a plus for government funded health insurance, whenever profit maximizing for shareholders is no longer in the picture, and the government is funding your care, the doctors and hospitals you see are no longer “hamstrung” and can focus on the patient’s health outcome, which frees them up to order whatever tests are necessary to bring that about.

So, this constant pushback by people against government funded healthcare and coming up with generic unsubstantiated scenarios, mostly using Canada as their use case, in my opinion is just a bunch of malarkey by persons with a self-interest for for-profit health insurance.

Right now, those pro-for-profit people will keep sticking by that because that is currently their gravy train. But some day when they are old, unless they become multimillionaires, they also will change their tune and end up being for government funded health insurance once they retire or end up working for a some dead end job, if they somehow lose their current corporate gif and cannot get back in that same financial position.

What could possibly go wrong by expanding a program with 70 million people enrolled to another 270 million more Americans?

@jm I agree with your disagreement. Literally every single person I know who is on Medicare, including hard right people who decried publicly funded insurance prior to aging in, lamenting when they'd have to sign up for it, roundly says it's the best insurance they've EVER had.

The government cant efficiently run the post office...how do you expect them to run a monster like health care?

@jd I respectfully disagree. And will tell you why.

Since being pushed out of my role two years ago, I am a military veteran, so I signed up for health coverage under Department of Veterans Affairs, which is a “.gov.”

And since then, I have had been to my primary care physician, a couple specialists, labs, and even had surgery. Never had such great care and concern. Much much better than private health insurance provided me.

@j4 my only real concern with this is the complete ineptitude of any .gov to efficiently fix or manage anything. Just as much greed, profiteering and lies in every public sector. IMO best case scenario is that it would eventually become more equitable and sustainable in the long game.

@ee I am part of the ‘R’ party and do not plan to change that. However, when it comes to the greed of health insurance corporations that has driven up the costs of healthcare to a level that now it os too late for even extensive government regulation to ever be able to reign in, I believe the only solution now is to go all in on government funded healthcare for all. Yes, it will drive up taxes but I no longer see any other realistic solution.

Also, if you look at specific countries that have already done this, the facts are that their average life expectancy is greater than the United States.

@e6 maybe not total destruction but it is clear we need more government oversight since we can’t rely on on giant Healthcare companies to do the right thing. It’s all platitudes about “ Health of Humanity” type sh-t that means nothing. They could put caps on executive compensation and more stringent rules on what can be denied, etc. clearly it’s not working and people are going to stop going to the doctor, which I’m pretty sure is the goal as now companies can’t get out huge premiums without covering dr visits. It’s gonna cost everyone more in the long run but it seems no one wants to look at what the long-term consequences are going to be if we continue to do business the same way.

@h9 Nah, why would they let those pesky little things like facts get in the way?

@ee prove it with facts -

Healthcare su-ks ever more in countries where they provide it for free...predictably.

@ds - Correct - Democrats Republicans and Independents want affordable healthcare like it seems can be accomplished in many countries except this one - Where medication is affordable etc. I am all for the total distruction of private commercial insurance .

People are SICK OF THE GREED - THE CONTROL AND THE GRIFT of places like this

What a shame for the members they claim to care so much about. It's disturbing such a large amount of money is seen as nothing to the higher ups. Do we think this will change anything?

@ds boo hoo

The Democratic winners want to get rid of PBMs and private corrupt insurance companies like this one. They will have Medicare for all! Every time this clown CEO gets caught, it's just another support point to get rid of private health insurance.

Wow. So glad to be gone from there. Nice job, Carelon! 😖

@OP the fines and fees are simply cheaper operating costs. Undoubtedly massive claims cost savings by design. Every plan in the enterprise is well aware that the provider listings are inaccurate and has been for years.

@OP "The OAG’s first investigation found, through a secret shopper study, that Carelon's online provider directories contained many errors, including listings for providers who were unreachable, no longer practicing, not accepting new patients, or not actually in-network."

This is also of true of the HPN network in general. It is terrible.

I guess working for the 'health of humanity' doesn't include New York??? IMO - Narrow Network equals no health care availability. Too bad the financial loss won't occur until next year. I will likely be gone by bonus time in 2028.