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Time is a circle. That's why clocks are round.
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Political Memes
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Why would it matter to them whether they pay out for hospitalisation, or pay out for flu shots? The payouts don't matter. We saw that with the banking crisis. They're covered by bigger insurers who are covered by government bailouts because they're too big to fail. All that matters is that premiums keep coming in.
Insurance companies can write off excess payments anyway. Those making the decisions undoubtedly have hedged portfolios, so if the company they're working for goes under it doesn't matter as long as other companies in their portfolio benefit. Many will even take out short positions on their own failing company and profit from its demise.
Gone are the days when CEOs actually cared if their particular company's on-book expenditures matched its income.
All money out matters to an insurer.
Insurance is generally written on risks that are not hedgable. What they care about is making sure their risks don't all happen at the same time.
I'm not talking about the insurance, I'm talking about the people making decisions for that company. They will have a share portfolio which forma that major part of their personal income which will be hedged. As such, so long as the broad capitalist system keeps extracting wealth, they will keep earning. Their own company is often little more than a side project compared to their assets.
It's truly shocking to me that people are still falling for this notion of the wise, financially prudent, CEO - even after the 2008 crash and all the fallout. People are still invested in this mythology around how businesses work.
I guess with healthcare people need the comfort. After all, seeing medicine like any other product of modern industry is a pretty scary leap, so people have to build a narrative around it by which it's magically protected.
It isn't. It's the same as literally every other product on the market. You can wrangle it in as much storytelling as you like, but nothing is going to make production of pharmaceuticals any different to production of paint, oil, cars, tanks, and any other thing you can think of. The most profitable practice is chosen and that often is to the detriment of ordinary people.
CEOs still only care because they can get a bigger bonus.
Sure. The point is that they don't have to balance income and expenditure to ensure that. What they have to do is perpetuate the capitalist system. That needn't be by balancing their books.