
Ask HN: Can the US insurance industry afford to pay for Covid-19? - 34679
If not, can the healthcare industry afford to not be paid by the insurance industry?<p>edit:<p>Can the insurance industry even afford the costs of the testing that&#x27;s about to be needed? If 60% of the 300,000,000 insured Americans need $10,000 worth of tests, that&#x27;s $1.8 trillion.[1] The industry collected a total of $1.22T in premiums in 2018.[2]<p>[1][PDF]https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;nchs&#x2F;data&#x2F;nhis&#x2F;earlyrelease&#x2F;insur201905.pdf
[2]https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iii.org&#x2F;fact-statistic&#x2F;facts-statistics-industry-overview
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StudentStuff
The healthcare industry can't afford to exist if they don't get paid by
someone (whether that is the insurers or Medicare/Medicaid). We've seen mass
closures of rural hospitals and medical practices as more rural Americans have
lost insurance or gotten insurance that has large penalties for using said
insurance:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18kxPz4Z_g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18kxPz4Z_g8)

Insurers themselves are a mixed bag, many have gone broke as IIRC the gov't
managed pool of money they were supposed to pull out of/put money into to
ensure no insurer went under from too many unhealthy, newly insured people has
been starved of funding under our current administration.

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muzani
One option is the government can subsidize tests, so that $10,000 becomes
$5,000. It's in their best interests to do so.

I also doubt 300M will need testing - by that stage, if everyone is infected,
what's the point of testing? It'll probably only be done for the first million
at best.

I suppose hospitals are going to want to claim as many tests as possible for
the $$$ but at some point the insurers would realize this is ridiculous and
stop approving them.

