UCHealth … has $5 BILLION in its hedge fund, and its CEO (I think) made $8m. It hasn’t filed a 990 for years as far as I can tell. Which is probably illegal.
UC has been getting collection agencies to sue patients who owe them trivial amounts of money, and hiding the fact that UC is the actor behind the suit…. The tales here are awful. Little old ladies being forced to sell their engagement rings, and uninsured immigrants being taken to the ER against their will and given a total runaround on costs until they end up in court.
What’s the end story here? UC Health gets a measly $5m (or a share of it) a year from all these lawsuits which is less than the CEO makes….
Category: Health Insurance
Saturday Links
- Eugene Steuerle on why Donald Trump and other wealthy people like to borrow. Recommended
- New evidence that Covid was developed in a lab. (WSJ)
- There are over 10,000 known rare diseases and most don’t have a drug approved to treat them. The FDA has approved over 19,000 prescription drugs. Could AI find cures in the 19K to treat the 10K? (WSJ)
- After Morley Safer attributed France’s lower rate of heart disease to drinking red wine in a 1991 segment of 60 Minutes, red wine sales in the United States jumped 40 percent. New research says that’s all wrong.
- AFP: What is an HSA? (30 sec video)
- AFP: How does an HSA benefit you? (30 sec video)
- Members of Congress are upset that Pfizer gave a $50 donation to Dying with Dignity, Canada.
- Danger at the beach: Sand holes are about as deadly as sharks.
Surprise: Health Care Demand Curves are Negatively Sloped
A new working paper on the effects of Medigap on total per-person spending over the period 1999 to 2012 confirms what many other prior studies have shown, which is that Medigap drives up costs and service use. According to the study’s authors, those enrolled in Medigap plans incurred $2300 more in annual per person costs (in 2014 dollars) compared to similarly situated FFS enrollees who did not have supplemental insurance. Medicare’s added costs were $400 per person per year….
The authors conclude that the most likely explanation is that lowering the price of medical services to zero (or near zero) induces more demand. It is a commonsense interpretation. Patients will opt to get more services, and the clinicians taking care of them will be more inclined to offer them too, if insurance is paying the entire bill.
Source: James Capretta, AEI
Federal Agencies Easy to Scam for Ineligible Health Benefits
Federal government bureaucrats love health insurance. It’s almost like a religion. They believe in health insurance for its own sake. If you pay $500 a month for health coverage that you don’t use, that’s fine because someone else in your risk pool will use it. It’s like going to church. You should just do it and the feds encourage it.