But just do the math. The health care insurance industry, in the way it is currently structured, is nothing but a cost center.
Show me the innovation.
The health care insurance industry (at least for the part of its work that's providing insurance against serious risks), is like any other insurance industry, in the business of managing and spreading risk, not actually providing medical care. There probably isn't a massive amount of innovation in this any more, the basic principles are rather old now, there might be some minor tweaking of them every now and then, and they do improve ways of processing and handling data and such, but your right its not a real center for dynamic innovation. But that doesn't mean its no providing a service. Spreading and managing risk is a service, often an important one.
They spend enormous amounts of money competing against each other.
The extent they are seriously competing against each other, is the only thing that makes them care about providing half way decent service, or containing the prices they charge at all. I wouldn't look for less competition with eagerness.
but above all else: they spend their money most effectively lobbying congress
Sure they spend some that way, but its not a significant part of their revenue. In fact at least generally with companies and I think (but am not 100% certain) also with health insurance companies the lobbying is surprisingly light considering how much government decisions affect profitability. With all the money and all the decisions to favor special interests tossed around by congress you would think they would pay a lot more to aggressively rent seek, and with all the extra costs government policies can create you would think they would spend more on defensive lobbying. I can only guess there are diminishing returns to continuing to spend more and more on lobbying, otherwise we would probably be seeing a lot more of it. |
