alt Hacker News>Yes, all of this only works if the payer is large relative to other payers. There was a period of history where this was a caveat, now it's just an observation about history. Now, there is 1 or 2 mega-players in each region. They've divvied up the country into their own territories and will extract rent henceforth.
...which is specifically what I acknowledge in my original comment:
>... unless UHI cornered the insurance market within a given region, otherwise they'd lose business to competing hospitals.
For all the words you wrote, it doesn't seem like you're disputing this point, and you're not providing any evidence that UHI has monopoly/monopsony powers, only postulating that it's probably true.
So your very substantive contribution to "they're abusing market power" is the observation "they could only do this if they have market power?"
And you're wanting someone else to go demonstrate to you that the single entity that is both 1) largest health insurer and 2) largest health provider in the country has significant market power?
I'll assume that this is legitimate ignorance and not a bad faith attempt to muddy conversation, and I'll direct you to a few resources where you can read several years of extensive investigative reporting on the myriad ways the pay-vider structure enables acquisition and exploitation of market power:
https://www.economicliberties.us/data-tools/unitedhealth-gro...
https://www.statnews.com/unitedhealth-group-investigation-he...
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/unitedhealth-medicare-fraud-inve...
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-health-insura...
https://publicintegrity.org/topics/health/federal-programs/m...
You can also read the public filings of the payviders to read them bragging about their use of these techniques.
Here's direct reporting on the concentration itself: https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama...