The Ranch With Ed Jacobson & Hobson Carroll

This one is a live episode at the Ranch with Ed Jacobson and Hobson Carroll. They talk about how health insurance is treated differently as compared to other types of insurance. They also discuss how healthcare insurance has evolved in the US starting from the early 60s.

They deal with different factors changing the face of healthcare insurance in the country, starting from the times when immunization drugs started to roll about and they passed Medicare and Medicaid to deal with the elderly and kids from poor families who couldn’t afford healthcare.

They underline the fact that emotional and political and religious influences on our system have a bearing on how much we spend on healthcare in this country.

And then they talk of the times when suddenly, there was a cash mill going on. Doctors and providers started seeing money coming in for populations that they previously couldn't count on for much money.

And it was “Hey, we can charge more money because we can charge the insurance companies!”

As the insurers improved the depth and width of their country, of their products, the marketplace adapted to it. The providers adapted to it.

Stay tuned to dive deeper.

Key Points of Discussion:

• Health insurance: One wants to pay a dollar in and collect more (0:38)
• It is expected of health insurance to cover high-cost rare event things (5:32)
• The early 60s: Start of healthcare insurance as a bigger dollar volume biz (10:37)
• The medical-industrial complex: We started to have more drugs (12:04)
• “We can charge more money… we can charge the insurance companies!” (12:55)
• Insurance companies setting those guidelines around rebates and things (24:35)
• All these so-called single-payer countries… (29:52)
• Failing by making patients not feel responsibility for anything they spend (33:48)
• Getting buyers to want the better benefits that most won't need or use (35:39)
• Starting in the mid-70s, general inflation and medical inflation were rising (37:55)
• Today, there are massive administrative costs (38:35)
• How’d an insurer compete in a market where everything is the same? (39:32)
• Going to the network doctor because it will cost you less… (42:21)
• The role of the advocacy and the administrative service (47:43)