As best I can tell, this surgery center is charging 2x to 4x the price for breast reconstruction as other centers ($42k per claim per the article). Yes, it's an advanced center with new techniques, but are they really providing an extra $20k-$30k in value? I don't know the answer to that, just posting the numbers because it's not a matter of a small difference in pricing.
But, could this be an interesting inflection point, where rich doctors and even richer executives of insurance companies are now starting to eat each other.
I think this is just one of the downsides of being among the most hated industries in the US... juries are made of people you've inevitably screwed before.
See, X is the amount we make every time we screw somebody. We multiply X by the probability that they will end up in a jury against us, and we multiply that by the average award, and if the amount is smaller than X, we continue to screw.
That's how insurance companies are supposed to work? The current price they were charging was presumably based off the assumption that they didn't have to pay 2-4x more for "advanced surgeries". If as a result of this court case it turned out they did, you'd expect prices to go up. It's not any different than insurance companies raising prices after a major disaster.
> “They even kept a log of the G-file savings from Drs. Sullivan, DellaCroce, and Trahan, and that goes right to the bottom line in profit,” said Dr. Sullivan.
BCBS Louisiana is a mutual insurer, so the “profits” would be lower premiums for insureds, absent embezzlement by the BCBSLA leaders.
Not that BCBSLA leaders are innocent of any wrongdoing, but just an FYI that it it is not a typical business with shareholders.
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