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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

> Nobody argues against that, but United Healthcare had a denial rate of more than 30%, which is the highest among the major health insurance companies in the US.

As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies. That's a simple mathematical fact: a finite set of numbers has a maximum number. You need to do more legwork to show any actual wrongdoing on anyone's part here.

> In every just society, the debtor has a responsibility as well to not lend money to people who cannot afford it. Giving somebody a loan they cannot afford and then bankrupting them is definitely non-physical violence.

This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.

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> As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies. That's a simple mathematical fact: a finite set of numbers has a maximum number. You need to do more legwork to show any actual wrongdoing on anyone's part here.

This isn't correct. Mathematically (as you say), you can have all health companies have a denial rate of 0%.

Realistically it's impossible, but you did say mathematically.

This is pedantry at it's finest, but at the risk of adding more... Wouldn't the mathematical maximum be 0 in that case?

Correct! I was more-so addressing the following statement, not necessarily the mathematical maximum one:

> As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies

If OP was going to start leaning onto "mathematical fact[s]" to support their argument, they should probably be accurate as well. Specifically there will be "multiple" health insurance companies with the highest denial rate (0), not "a" company.

> This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.

Weren't you just calling someone's comment "exceedingly naive"?

The poor and financially vulnerable (ie, most Americans) are at a systemic disadvantage when dealing with debt, bankruptcy laws, and the justice system. They are preyed upon by all sorts of people offering debt, at a higher rate than ever before, anywhere.

Not to mention government bailouts, which really changed the game with regard to balancing risk.

> This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.

That depends, amongst other things, on how much interest you charge in the interim. Payday lenders makes lots of money off of people who a) cannot afford their loans by any reasonable metric and b) default on those loans.

No. Whether you charge large or small interest, you never want your debtor to go bankrupt, because it means cessation of the interest payments.

If you think payday lenders care one iota about debtors going bankrupt after collecting multiples of the original loan amount in interest, I cannot help you.

Of course they care, they’d rather the debtor never go bankrupt, so that they can keep collecting. Do you understand how loans work?

I get that you have an ideological position to defend and, based on your other comments in this thread have either an inability or an unwillingness to cede any ground. So while, yes, I do understand how loans work, I do not have any further interest in talking to you about payday lenders. Have a nice day.

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