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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (134644)	3/24/2010 4:16:00 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542804

Lane, after reading your last post I'd say you were being deliberately obtuse. But let's take another stab at it, just in case you really don't get it. "In the first place, I cannot find any way to believe that a non-profit prices with any regard for its profits. In the second place, pricing at a lower level may very well maximize profits. In the third place, how did we refocus from booting sick customers onto pricing? The questions above are all rhetorical. I don't see any profit, pun intended, in going forward with this." First, many insurance companies are run for profit and non profit companies are sometimes run ruthlessly by executives and board members maximizing their personal fortunes and amassing power. Second, of course pricing at a lower level may maximize profits, or not. That's the point. If you have oligopolistic pricing power you'll have the power to price at the level that maximizes profits and if that's a higher price then that's the price you'll set. And guess what, the profit maximizing price is virtually always above the price you'd expect to see in a competitive market. Third, we wandered into pricing because you seemed to suggest that maybe the health insurance companies had been forced to deny legitimate claims for benefits in order to stay in business. My point was that with their exemptions from antitrust laws, their oligopolistic markets and thus their pricing power they were more likely denying such claims in order to increase their profits. Ed