Since premiums never decrease, one can pretty easily plot out that in the next ~decade we will see family premiums larger than the median salary. The economics of all this are going to get very weird in the near future.
Since premiums never decrease, one can pretty easily plot out that in the next ~decade we will see family premiums larger than the median salary. The economics of all this are going to get very weird in the near future.
What happens in practice is that a provider charges $200 for "distributing Advil" and $50 for two pills. Then the insurance company, whose legally allowed profit is proportional to payouts, "negotiates" the price down to $150 total and claims to the person "we saved you $100". Then their accountant says "we paid out $150, so we get a profit margin of $40" (instead of the $0.50 they would get with a real at-cost charge).
But the price is made up nonsense and 100x actual cost for 15 seconds handing a 1¢ pill over. Which is why asking for an itemized receipt and saying you can't afford that suddenly drops the bill to $1.50.
When providers don't "play ball" with the price fixing the way insurance company wants, they go off network.
Fun fact, people in fact can't just 'do without' for housing/medical care, so can't act in a manner that keeps the market in check. Therefor neither of those two segments can be treated as actual markets, or expect the typical benefits of actual, working markets.
If you're talking about RealPage, the actual effect it had was putting more units on the market and lowering rents, not raising them.