alt Hacker NewsMy wife works in autism services. Insurance companies are the bane of her existence. Every six months (sometimes less), she has to write a huge report justifying services. These reports are frequently over 100 pages and she is only slotted so much time to do it, so she ends up doing a ton of unpaid work. The entire business model is to drown the practitioner in paperwork then use “peer reviewers” who are nurses that don’t know anything about the treatment to deny claims then waste the practitioner’s time on appeals in the hopes that people will give up. AI has obviously made this process easier and the insurance companies absolutely hate it.
People have no idea how inefficient the U.S.’s healthcare system is. And it isn’t just the private companies. A ton of states purposefully overburden and underfund their Medicaid systems for ideological reasons. Then the private insurance companies adopt the same practices later.
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Inefficiency is their business model. They just soak $$ into their system. More overall revenue even if most of it is some rube goldberg machine of apathy.
From time to time, I see similar claims like this on HN: "doing a ton of unpaid work". The full quote:
> These reports are frequently over 100 pages and she is only slotted so much time to do it, so she ends up doing a ton of unpaid work.
> A ton of states purposefully overburden and underfund their Medicaid systems for ideological reasons.
And then people are shocked when insurance executives are publicly slayed.
I've always enjoyed the question, "how many layers of profit are between you and your doctor?"