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by foolswisdom 457 days ago
That's nominal profit margins. It doesn't take into account the way that different parts of these conglomerates take money from one pocket and put it in the other (e.g. insurance and Healthcare providers), which means it doesn't show up in the profits for your first pocket. This is why the fact that Healthcare platforms are vertical monopolies (not just horizontal monopies) is important to this conversation.

(separately, profit capping rules means that once a monopoly is cemented, once a company has moved as much as it can from one pocket to the other, there's an internal incentive to spend money on bureaucracy).
2 comments
roenxi 457 days ago
Because the regulations encourage vertical monopolies. Replacing that with a state mandated vertical monopoly unconstrained by market forces isn't going to help. In fact it'll probably make the situation worse. There is no reason for there to be monopolies in healthcare and if they are emerging that strongly suggests misregulation. Giving the regulators more power in that sort of situation is the opposite of helping.
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ThePowerOfFuet 457 days ago
Are you seriously arguing against single-payer healthcare?
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roenxi 457 days ago
Which part of the argument strikes you as frivolous?
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ThePowerOfFuet 456 days ago
Not frivolous, but outright incorrect.
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roenxi 456 days ago
So far it's beating your argument pretty handily. I'm not sure why you think it is worth writing that without including one; but my advice would be if your going to post a comment disagreeing with someone you should include some actual arguments or evidence. It helps keep the threads from rambling on.
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lotsofpulp 457 days ago
>That's nominal profit margins. It doesn't take into account the way that different parts of these conglomerates take money from one pocket and put it in the other (e.g. insurance and Healthcare providers), which means it doesn't show up in the profits for your first pocket.

This is nonsense. UNH’s profit margin is all net income divided by all revenue.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-g...

Same with Elevance, CVS, Cigna, Humana, Centene, and Molina. There is a reason all these businesses aren’t at the top of the market cap rankings. Not even in the top 100.

UNH is up there due to sheer size and the fact that they sell high profit margin software and healthcare. Otherwise, you will not get rich starting a managed care organization. Even Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon ran away with their tail between their legs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_Healthcare

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