The stock market and publicly traded companies. The idea that a business that is making consistent profits isn’t good unless those profits are increased each quarter is asinine. This system of shortsighted hyper focus on short term quarterly growth for the sake of growth is the cause of so much pain and suffering in the world. Even companies with amazing financials will work to push workers compensation down, cut corners and exploit loopholes to make sure their profits are always growing. Consistent large profits aren’t good enough.
Instapot. Instapot made too good of a product, most people buy one and its good for years. That’s good for consumers but terrible for investors. The company that bought them out and took them public saddled them with a ton of debt from other sectors and now they’re bankrupt.
Private health insurance is the biggest fucking scam ever. The private insurance companies benefit by getting the aggregate healthiest population into their plans (working adults). The most likely to be expensive people, i.e. old people (on medicare) or poor people (on medicaid, or not even on an insurance plan) are on government, tax payer insurance plans. There is literally no reason except for corporate profiteering that Medicare should not be expanded to cover all people.
Also all those conversations, especially in the 2020 election period, were totally bullshit. You say something like M4A will cost 44 trillion dollars or whatever, which sounds like an insane amount of money. What is often left out of the discussion is that estimated cost was 1) over 10 years and 2) has to be weighed against the current costs we already pay for insurance. So the deal was very simple: the overall costs would go down because the overall spending would be less, and at the same time millions of people without coverage would be covered, and at the same time you don’t have to contemplate stupid bullshit like in network, out of network providers. Or ever again talk to your insurance about why something is or isn’t covered. Boils my blood when I think too much about this.
Not even gonna weigh in on things like how medicare can’t negotiate prescription drug prices (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/medicare-drug-price-negotiations-lawsuits.html), or how dental, vision, and hearing are treated separately from general healthcare, or how med school is prohibitively expensive, or how the residents after med school are overworked because the guy who institutionalize that practice was literally a cokehead. Those are all just bonus topics. The point is we are getting fleeced.
Probably gonna anger both sides here, but I see both private insurance and single-payer healthcare as equally-evil scams. Why not focus on driving down costs of healthcare (i.e. EVERYTHING) so that you throw a couple bucks at the receptionist to cover your surgery then check to see if you have enough for a post-surgery soda?
Real estate agents getting 6% commission from the seller.
Sell it yourself then.
No one can because of laws written by real estate agents who turned into legislators.
That’s not true. I’ve sold real estate to a buyer without a realtor.
Go get your real estate license. It’s not hard especially if you’re going to be complaining about the 6%
In my state it requires a six week class, passing a test, then working under a licensed broker for 6 months. I considered it.
First Past the Post voting at elections.
Welcome to Canada.
I’m still salty about that broken Liberal promise to reform our elections. None of the parties care about it and it seems no one wants to try to change it.
Your ISP is suddenly asking for more money. What are you gonna do? Disconnect from the internet?
Homes as wealth-creators.
Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it’s not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.
Many other countries don’t treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it’s not a retirement account.
This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don’t reflect people’s actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.
We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.
Professors requiring their own, expensive textbook for their course.
Car dealerships. They are awful on purpose. In many places car manufacturers are not legally allowed to sell their cars directly to customers, in order to create what is essentially legally mandated car dealerships, which all suck.
Wedding rings/diamonds in general.
The tradition isn’t as old as people think and was literally started by a jewelry company to sell more jewelry. Specifically diamonds, which are not as rare as commonly believed and if not for the false scarcity and misinformation, would be dirt cheap.
Credit scores. It goes up when you have more debt and goes down when you pay your debt off, but it goes down if you ask for a loan and it goes down if you even try to check what it is.
Absolute nonsense.
Chiropractors.
Even though this is top comment, this is an underrated answer.
The entire industry is built on catering to the vast swaths of women who get ignored by doctors and need somewhere to turn.
I highly suspect doctors are taught in medical school, “women are over emotional and prone to exaggeration.”
Hell, “hysteria” was considered a valid diagnosis until the 1950s.
This guy gets it. Chiropractors are a scam, but scammers are drawn to people who “fall through the cracks” because they’re treated like their problems don’t actually exist. Finally, they meet someone who takes their pain seriously. It’s too bad the person who takes it “seriously” is a fucking charlatan.
It falls harder on women, who have more instances of pain that are ignored by the medical community, partially from the history mentioned above, claiming women must be experiencing “hysteria.”
It absolutely happens because of the failings of the medical community.
I was suffering from hyperemisis last year and it took 3 doctors before I finally found one to take me seriously, which I consider it lucky it only took 3. The last doc I was practically on my hands and knees begging them to take me seriously.
In the middle of all that I also ended up with pneumonia. Normally I never get sick so I was like wtf is going on. But anyways, a doctor finally took some chest x rays and 2 weeks later they call to tell me that my X-ray was clear. I. Went. Off. I ended up having to go to the ER 2 days after the doctor visit because I could no longer breathe, it was so painful. How is it possible that my x ray was clear??? Then another week goes by and the assistant calls to tell me that I do have pneumonia and a prescription has been sent in. I just hung up and filed complaints with everyone I could. That office was a hot mess.
I am so sorry. That’s devastating. You already have to struggle to fight your illness. But to have to fight that hard AGAINST YOUR DOCTOR when your doctor is supposed to be on your team? It’s a betrayal.
People always chime in with stories about how chiropractors helped them with XY and Z problem they were having.
And overall I don’t doubt them. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with your spine or other joints, and I’m certain that some of them can be addressed by physically manipulating and adjusting it.
But the basic premise of chiropractic treatments is that basically all human ailments can be fixed in that way, which should sound like total bullshit to anyone with half a brain. And that’s before you get into all spiritual nonsense that pervades a lot of the field.
Now some of them understand that that’s a load of bullshit and may even be realistic about the things they can treat, but it can be pretty damn hard to sort them out from the ones who think that your pancreatic cancer is caused by ghosts in your spine and they know how to get them out or some bullshit like that.
Now if you have a good idea what your issue is and what needs to be done to fix it, take the time to carefully vet your chiropractor to make sure they’re not going to try some crazy bullshit on you, you very well may be able to get a decent treatment from them. Maybe you’ll even be able to save some money going with that.
But for most of us who aren’t doctors and so only have kind of vague ideas what exactly the issue is and that the treatments we’re doing actually make any sense, and don’t necessarily have time to do all of that research and carefully vet that the person treating them isn’t secretly a quack, you could just get the same sort of treatments from actually physical therapists, orthopedists, physiatrists, etc. with the added benefit of them actually understanding the issues and how to fix them properly.
Chiropractors are kind of like the rednecks of the medicine world. Some of them know exactly what they’re doing with that harbor freight welder, they may not do things by the book but they know for certain what works and what doesn’t and more importantly know when something is beyond what them and their buddies can accomplish on a free Saturday with a case of beer and when they need to suck it up and limp their truck to the shop and let a professional deal with it. Others know just enough to be dangerous and while they can get the job done 90% of the time or at least not make things worse, that 10% of the time something is literally going to blow up in someone’s face. And still others are just meth heads looking to make a quick buck and it’s a miracle they’re not behind bars. And when you see them hanging around the local watering hole, it may not be totally clear which is which until it’s too late.
Not all chiropractors are the same, but not knowing who’s who is dangerous
There are physical therapists who know the actual manipulations that work and use them as needed for treatment. It’s the best of both worlds.
I agree. Physical therapists have to get a doctorate to get licensed, so they definitely know what they’re doing.
My personal top 3:
- insurance
- subscriptions
- Google and similar data hungry companies (while not a financial scam but moreso a privacy scam, companies like Google and Meta profiteering on our personal data without our knowledge or awareness)
Technically insurance only works if everybody pays in. Wouldn’t work as a concept if every tom dick and harry could pay them $100 then a week later need $100,000. They’d basically be out of business right quick with nothing to provide for anyone. Maybe as some believe it should just be provided through taxes, but it’s certainly not a scam.
It’s true insurance companies need to take in adequate premiums in order to have the money the money to pay claims. And when done in balance, insurance is a great thing. Not all insurance in a scam, no doubting that.
But the current state of insurance, especially health insurance in the US, shows that these companies are making massive profits. How does this happen? Literally one way: They take in more premiums than they pay out in coverage. How? By either knowingly overcharging people or skirting out of paying covered claims through other means (such as baseless rejections).
That’s the problem with the entire insurance industry and why it must be properly regulated in any industry: It is a race to the bottom. The worse the insurer treats the people that buy insurance from them, the better the company does financially (charge a lot, pay out a little). Mix in the fact that (1) you cannot shop around at the time you need a claim and (2) the contracts are so intensive only a sophisticated legal team can interpret them, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
So you’re right that all insurance isn’t necessarily a scam. But if you can’t see that the US health insurance industry raking in profits shows serious dysfunction that could be considered a scam, it’s worth taking a second look.
Nobody works for free. In order to be a large effective and not out of business business you need to have a profit to cover overhead like staff.
Profit is revenue minus expenses
Did someone say people should work for free? No where am I saying that. Massive profits are not necessary to cover overhead - expenses like overheard and salaries are paid for by revenue - what’s leftover is profit.
This thread is about whether the current US healthcare insurance industry is a scam or not. Scam means “a dishonest scheme” and insurance saying it’s going to provide healthcare coverage but actually just takes your money, doesn’t provide coverage, and only pays investors/executives could be considered a dishonest scheme by many.
Insurance companies have a natural tendency to become worse and worse over time. This is called the race to the bottom and is an incredibly well-known phenomena in insurance. Like monopolies, insurance is one of the rare situations where experts are in damn-near universal agreement that heavy regulation is necessary.
Right now, insurance companies are objectively very bad to the people they provide coverage for. This isn’t an opinion, this is a fact that’s easily verified and well understood. They are not being effectively regulated and as such, are racing to the bottom by providing absolutely terrible coverage while taking in massive premiums. This is not good for anyone and is not fixed by a free market in any way. You cannot effectively shop for insurance and their behavior is not rectified, unless prohibited by law (regulation).
I only posted what I did because your post read like you expected insurance to run by paying out 100% of what they get in. The thread started with general insurance but many zeroed in on health insurance. Yes there are problems, obviously, but certain things like denying claims comes about from many people trying to scam payments and the insurers tightening security too much without enough oversight.
Everybody seems to think there’s huge payments going to investors and C level executives but that comes from market confidence. So the stock price rises and those bonuses of stock options appreciate without the company paying a dime.
United Healthcare pulled in $20 BILLION dollars in PROFIT in 2022. The ceo was given $24 million in compensation for that year. Denying claims because of scams? They can afford it.
How was that compensation structured? Was it cash or stock? And how much money would they spend if they didn’t act paranoid about false claims? Would that dissolve the 80 billion because it’s possible.
Aside from that, did you notice this is a 2 month old post?
