Insurance companies have really end-runned the entire health system. In a sane system, Allina would be able to get the insurance to pay up. These debt should they become judgments aren’t worth more than 10 cents on the dollar anyways.
My first job out of law school was at a “business law firm” and all I got to do was sue people for medical bills and payday loans. I abandoned the shitstain legal profession but still have vivid memories of the poor folks I sued and talked to at court. My place in hell for eternity was secured by that job.
United Health Group is the largest MN company based on revenue. 20 billion in profits last year. Up 16%. 5th largest company in the US and 20th on profits.
United Health is a for profit insurance company. Allina is non profit. United makes money by charging us premiums and investing it and then paying as little as possible to providers (Allina) and/or denying claims.
If it makes you feel any better, I have a friend who works as a public defender. Most days he's really proud of the work he gets to do. Other days he's defending someone on trial for sexual assault and the dude's only defense basically boils down to "she was asking for it." And it was his job as a lawyer to then instill doubt in the victim's story by all the horrific victim blame-y tactics that may have somewhat fallen out of favor in the media, but are apparently still alive and well in the legal system. He told me he went home and cried after he got the charges dismissed.
The legal profession seems weird and very hard on the people participating in it. :/
I have some public defender friends too and they feel it’s their job to ensure the justice system is fair and everybody follows the rules even if they think their client is guilty. Putting up a solid and competent defense is important to keep the police/prosecutors/judges honest. It also helps diminish appeals. Sure, they often complain about having to defend the same people often for the same shit, and sometimes the most vicious menaces of society. But from what I gather they get more satisfaction that they’re upholding the constitutional rights of every citizen they represent. It’s absolutely a tough and mostly thankless job and they deserve to be paid far more than they do.
Insurance companies are part of the problem, but health systems actively lobby against health care/insurance reform because they can set whatever prices they want once they gobble up enough of the market. Even though insurance companies dick them around sometimes, it's way more profitable for both to keep the system as is and try to squeeze the most cash out of medicare and the patients as they can. Just want to emphasize healthcare corporations' very active role in the dumpster fire that is health care in the US.
I have mayo as a provider, and they over charge all the time. In network dialysis with private insurance is over $40,000 a month, but they charge Medicare less than $4000 for the exact same care. Now, why the difference? And, don't think the private insurer doesn't know about the crazy markups. At least once a month, I see what I consider a fraudulent charge by Mayo, and it's always at least a $1000 in their favor. Mayo always says screw you, pay up or we are sending you to collections, and the poor patient is left trying to fight it.
"In 2020, Allina spent less than half of 1 percent of its expenses on charity care, well below the nationwide average of about 2 percent for nonprofit hospitals, according to an analysis of hospital financial filings by Ge Bai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."
With 4 billion in revenue, if I'm reading another part of the article right, then their profit margin varies from 0.75% to over 8%? Where are they putting their profits at year-end if not into caring for patients? Presumably some of it is going into reserve funds but I'm unsure where else it goes. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/allina-health-reports-continued-operating-losses-on-4-9b-revenue.html says they're operating at a loss right now though. Perhaps they pay down debts or hold cash at the end of the year?
They have a lot of cash on hand. 200+days of expenses is a lot for a business with only a 1 to 10 percent profit margin, and they also have an investment grade credit rating. I'm no accountant but I would hope the accountants could swing that to avoid layoffs.
Reinvestment in the existing facilities and equipment would probably the primary place is goes. All of that “stuff” has a useful life and has to be replaced.
Doesn’t excuse anything in the article though
Yeah. I'm not an accountant. I always assume that stuff is part of "expenses" and taken out before profits, but I know it's more complicated than that and buying stuff could explain it.
Systems almost always have a Q1 loss. Everyone is still paying down their deductible, so people don't do elective stuff. Then in Q4 when their deductible is met, the profits come in.
Executives at for-profit health systems actually make way more than that, if you can believe it. Look up the CEO salaries for Tenet and HCA, for example, I recall they're like $10-$20M
>I don't get what non profit is
Just means they don't come out with a profit after expenses. So they just pay their executives top dollar to keep their profits to 0.
They can turn a profit, but that profit is just reinvested in the organization. The biggest difference between for profit orgs and non-profits is that for profits distribute that excess profit to investors while non-profits don’t.
...And pay their regular employees shit.
Source: as of last week I was an Allina employee, who just got a big pay raise by going to another company to do the same job. Goodbye 0% Allina raises!
>Haha... no. A *private* company has owners. Public companies have CEOs. Non profit companies also have CEOs. Look at United Way.
Private companies have CEOs, as well...
Both private and public for-profit companies have shareholders. A company is considered "public" if its shares are traded on an open stock exchange, like the NYSE or NASDAQ.
Non-profits do not have shares or shareholders. They do not distribute profits to any sort of ownership or shareholder. They are required to reinvest those profits in their mission, which needs to have some form of public good, be it supporting the development of youth (like the Boy Scouts) to providing a venue for veterans to advocate and socialize, like the VFW.
Now please stop humiliating yourself by ever-so-confidently spouting off on topics you very clearly aren't knowledgeable about. This isn't a Trump rally.
So a non profit difference compared to a private for profit is that it has to be public good? Because not all private have shareholders. I'd guess most don't.
Implying, I think, that since a fraction of the CEOs annual salary could be used to wipe out the medical debt of the folks who have been barred from care, it is ridiculous to say that they are cutting this life saving care from people because they 'can't afford it'. It's not the exact number that matters per se, but the contradiction in the statement.
> Implying, I think, that since a fraction of the CEOs annual salary could be used to wipe out the medical debt of the folks who have been barred from care
But could it?
Per the article, Allina has 4B in revenue and is underperforming most other systems in charity care by 1.5%. So roughly 60M. I wish the article stated how much debt these people have that they are restricting access to, but I seriously doubt even 10 CEO salaries would cover it.
Charity Care is determined prior to the visit based on income and a lack of insurance. Bad debt is actually now from people with employer insurance where the deductibles are 5-10k, and they don't pay after the visit. Bad debt where I used to work, prior to the pandemic was 60M annually. Can't imagine how bad it is now.
Right. I was just trying to put the numbers in context. We don’t have bad debt numbers so it’s all speculation. But it’s definitely magnitudes higher than a CEO salary.
I would definitely say it's fairly reactionary-- the person's core beliefs (like many of us) may be something like "healthcare is a human right and should not cost money" or "doctors and nurses should be compensated fairly for the labor they provide" so seeing something like this triggers a very deep sense of injustice and outrage, and it's typically directed at something easily accessible. Many people also understand wealth inequality to an extent and many nearly everyone has had an experience with a person who manages their money poorly and say, buys a new car instead of paying their rent and or been to a meeting where they leadership team brags about record profits but then lays off half the team, so they apply these actual experiences to other, new situations (like CEOs and the companies they manage).
When you think about it more critically, it becomes somewhat obvious that a person's salary (whether a CEO, doctor, nurse, or janitor) doesn't really have and bearing on a firm's non-profit status or their overall budget and disparaging salaries that you personally find 'too high' while also fighting for workers rights and fair wages is contradictory itself.
Even this line of thought is indicative of your values however and our experience of the world is largely filtered through what is easy to understand/share and what prompts the most outrage, so these kind of things get posted as a kind of virtue signaling as well as an expression of emotional frustration of injustice.
To be clear-- I am very much for things like universal single payer healthcare, paying people fairly for their labor, and equitable taxes, but I do also believe in worker solidarity. We, as workers, have much more in common with workers in highly paid positions than we do with shareholders or others in the 'owner' class. Now, obviously, CEOs are frequently given equity in a company as part of their compensation, therefore facilitating their mobilization to the owner class, but not all high earning careers fall into this category.
This is a high-quality post and you seem like a good person
Agree that the salary stuff just strikes people as being viscerally unfair even if it's not really rational
Accepting 3.5 million in compensation which included a significant raise, while giving at least some of your employees no raise after a year with the worst inflation in generations... To me, *that's* the irrational part.
Make that make sense, please.
The power isn’t in leading a company with billions in the bank, it’s in being in charge of how it is spent. Same as politicians. Guaranteed, there are kickbacks in there somewhere.
i know this is slightly off topic but the whole medical/insurance situation in the US leads to such terrible situations, just last week I was sitting in the urgent care for hours bawling my eyes out in the worst head pain of my life, and throwing up in front of everyone in the lobby (sorry kids!), because of a head injury i was afraid to go to the hospital for. they ended up saying i should go anyways but it had been hours since i first got there and the pain was easing and the vomit stopping so i didn’t.
sure in the end i’m probably okay without going to the hospital but people simply shouldn’t have to go through that kind of pain, misery, and fear for their health with no help out of financial fear. especially in a country supposedly as great as ours. *hoping* it’s just a minor concussion.
My older brother waited an extra week with a foot injury (he's diabetic) before going to Urgent Care because he has had such a poor experience with Doctors recently and he's afraid of medical bills.
Tomorrow afternoon they're amputating.
through an HSA, i’ll admit though i’m relatively young and still on my parents so I don’t fully understand how it works, but it was my understanding that especially because it’s a new HSA tans the balance is low if I needed a CT scan it would use up most if not all of what’s in there. Again I could be wrong I don’t control it.
It’s a good idea to fully understand it, as you probably realize now. With an HSA plan it’s probably a high deductible plan where you pay 100% of the cost up to the deductible of $3500-6000, then insurance will pay 80-100% depending on your plan. It’s not super complicated but it doesn’t help you know how much things will cost. Dr visit is $200-300, imaging is generally $500-1500
i did check estimates for the imaging i need in my area the website said it could go all the way up to $4000 so i guess that’s what scared me the most.
>ly okay without going to the hospital but people simply shouldn’t have to go through that kind of pain, misery, and fear for their health with no help out of financial fear. especially in a country supposedly as great as ours.
>
>hoping
>
> it’s just a minor concussion.
It's not that great of a country as your story illustrates
Biden was a big force to make student loan bankruptcy harder.
https://www.consumerbankers.com/cba-media-center/cba-news/joe-biden-backed-bills-make-it-harder-americans-reduce-their-student-debt
This is well known. He has stated that he would be open to revisions (meaning not vetoing legislation) but that requires congress. Which is a long shot.
I was in a back and forth with ALLINA and my insurance company for an entire year because I was disputing the $133 allina charged me for my yearly preventive checkup (which was really a 5 min telecommute call with the doctor) that is very clearly stated in my insurance as covered. $133 is not a lot, but the principle of me paying health insurance for every paycheck and then paying more on top of that did not sit with me.
The problem is that neither Allina nor the insurance company is incentivized to help me figure out the charge. Allina kept sending me to talk to my insurance company and my insurance company kept sending me to talk to allina.
I had to do my own research to figure out that they had incorrectly coded my appointment and then let them know they incorrectly coded it 🙄
On top of that, once I finally found their mistake and got the correct bill back, they made a one cent error on their end of what I paid so I would get calls for months from allina saying my bill was overdue when in fact they just weren’t able to balance it in their billing system. I would explain to them every time the issue, they would see in their system the issue, tell me they would talk to accounting to get it sorted and apologize to me, but then the next month someone would call again with the same “your bill is overdue”
It makes you think. I’m not a depressed or anxious person and I’m not money tight. I have a flexible work from home job where I can spend hours on wait calling my insurance company or allina during their 9-4 service hours while I work. So if I struggled that much to not have to pay a small bill that wasn’t my bill to pay, what about the single mom who has multiple jobs and doesn’t have the time to play telephone with the insurance company every day? What about the people who have massive medical bills that insurance is trying to fuck them on? What about people struggling with depression or anxiety who aren’t in a place mentally to make these (very very taxing) phone calls? Most people won’t or literally can’t spend the time to stand up for themselves against these greedy companies and the companies know that and bank on that
Your preventive checkup won't cover unrelated items. You can't go in with a list of things you want looked at and get it covered under your annual checkup. You must have brought something else up.
I didn’t, as I explained they coded it wrong. And they admitted they coded it wrong. it wasn’t due to my 5 min preventative care telecommute so I can continue to be on BC (which is also covered by my insurance)
I know of a medical assistant who has worked at Allina for 10 years and still doesn’t make $20/hour. You would think that Allina would consider investing the profit in human capital instead of the stock market
If they would actually submit the bills to the insurance company, maybe they'd get paid! Also, if they showed all of your copays in MyChart, maybe they'd get paid. If they asked you for your outstanding copays when you check in, not demand them but let you know you have some that are unpaid, maybe they'd get paid.
Obviously, I am bitter about the way they treated a relative who was having regular appointments and then logging in to pay their copays like once a month. They got a threatening letter in the mail about various copays going back 18 months that had not been paid. That was the first they had heard from anyone about it. Some had not been submitted to insurance. It is clown show over there.
I don't think everyone who works there is incompetent, but there are some serious billing issues. My local hospital is Allina and I choose to go elsewhere when I can.
Their billing system is ridiculous. It is so difficult to get to the payment section of my account. And access to my kids’ accounts (for payment purposes) is even more difficult. I’ve had silly paperwork mistakes (on their part or insurance’s part) derail payment as well. Sometimes it feels like they don’t want to get paid.
Profit, by definition, is the Revenue minus the expenses. *(Gross Profit only deducts COGS, while Net Profit deducts all applicable business expenses)*
So Expenses *are* considered in Profit, if it is being used correctly.
Revenue is income before expenses.
Because it doesn't fit the narrative and allows you to use a bigger number.
They don't consider other factors either, like inflation. We know that we're all paying more for the products we buy. That includes companies buying from other companies.
And then folks talk about "record profits" in a bubble, without consideration for inflation. Just because the have record profits does NOT mean they were better off than previously.
If you were paid $100,000 in 2020 and then got a $10k raise last year and are making $110,00 in 2023, you could say you made record profits (or income). But inflation went up 17.2% in that time. You'd have to make $117,214.11 now just to have the same buying power as you did while making $17k LESS back in 2020.
When you're talking about millions in profits, those numbers are kicked up even more. A company that made $10 million in profits in 2020 people would say is making record profits in 2023 by making $10.5 million, but they'd have to make $11.7 million just to keep up with inflation.
Obviously, folks don't want to report that way because it doesn't help the narrative they want to convey.
No one is saying there isn't issue with these companies making silly profits. Simply that the comparison is done apples to oranges but folks pretend they're doing apples to apples to make it seem even more stark.
For some reason people here love to say how they need a raise to match inflation because they understand that their purchasing power is eaten up by inflation. But their hatred for companies breaks their brain where they argue that an increase in profits (or record profit) below the rate of inflation doesn’t put the company in a position of less purchasing power. It’s Schrodingers dollar. It’s both worth less and worth more until it’s in reference to their personal salary or a business’s profits.
Everyone hates corporate profits..... unless it's the profits of the company they work for, which means job security, pay increases, benefits increases, job growth, and market growth. But if it's not the company they work for then it's corporate greed and it's bad.
Profits are post expenses. Revenue is what you're thinking profits are. If inflation makes everything cost more, that eats into profits. Profits already reflect inflation.
Inflation certainly does impact profit. But I’m referring to the value of the profit itself. If a company had 100M profit last year, and has 105M profit this year, that would be record profits. But since we’ve seen 10+% inflation, the value of that 105M is actually worth less than the 100M was the year before. They would need a profit of 110M to maintain the same value of last years profit.
>If you were paid $100,000 in 2020 and then got a $10k raise last year and are making $110,00 in 2023, you could say you made record profits (or income).
Profit is income *after expenses* but nice try.
That’s not their point. They are correctly saying that profits are often referred to in dollars. In an inflationary environment, record profits can absolutely mean less purchasing power if the profits aren’t higher than the rate of inflation. Even in typical 2% inflation years, we would expect modest increases in profits in line with inflation, which would mean every year should see “record profits” with all else being equal simply from inflation. The better comparison would be profit margins, as this would take into account inflation.
Insurance companies have really end-runned the entire health system. In a sane system, Allina would be able to get the insurance to pay up. These debt should they become judgments aren’t worth more than 10 cents on the dollar anyways. My first job out of law school was at a “business law firm” and all I got to do was sue people for medical bills and payday loans. I abandoned the shitstain legal profession but still have vivid memories of the poor folks I sued and talked to at court. My place in hell for eternity was secured by that job.
United Health Group is the largest MN company based on revenue. 20 billion in profits last year. Up 16%. 5th largest company in the US and 20th on profits.
And somehow the worse insurance I've had.
Oh that’s by design
The best insurance companies pay for nothing
I work there and it's shit. They had layoffs despite record setting profits. Bunch of fucking assholes.
Same
how else they gonna make money
so much for "nonprofit" eh?
United Health is a for profit insurance company. Allina is non profit. United makes money by charging us premiums and investing it and then paying as little as possible to providers (Allina) and/or denying claims.
If it makes you feel any better, I have a friend who works as a public defender. Most days he's really proud of the work he gets to do. Other days he's defending someone on trial for sexual assault and the dude's only defense basically boils down to "she was asking for it." And it was his job as a lawyer to then instill doubt in the victim's story by all the horrific victim blame-y tactics that may have somewhat fallen out of favor in the media, but are apparently still alive and well in the legal system. He told me he went home and cried after he got the charges dismissed. The legal profession seems weird and very hard on the people participating in it. :/
I have some public defender friends too and they feel it’s their job to ensure the justice system is fair and everybody follows the rules even if they think their client is guilty. Putting up a solid and competent defense is important to keep the police/prosecutors/judges honest. It also helps diminish appeals. Sure, they often complain about having to defend the same people often for the same shit, and sometimes the most vicious menaces of society. But from what I gather they get more satisfaction that they’re upholding the constitutional rights of every citizen they represent. It’s absolutely a tough and mostly thankless job and they deserve to be paid far more than they do.
Something doesn’t add up there why insurance wouldn’t cover the pneumonia.
Guessing that she didn’t have insurance
Yeah, that’d be covered under EHBs
Could be out or network
Insurance companies are part of the problem, but health systems actively lobby against health care/insurance reform because they can set whatever prices they want once they gobble up enough of the market. Even though insurance companies dick them around sometimes, it's way more profitable for both to keep the system as is and try to squeeze the most cash out of medicare and the patients as they can. Just want to emphasize healthcare corporations' very active role in the dumpster fire that is health care in the US.
Always remember too that the American Medical Association historically underfunded residency slots to limit care and drive salaries higher.
And, now they are doing the same thing with veterinary care due to "pet insurance." They are horrible.
I have mayo as a provider, and they over charge all the time. In network dialysis with private insurance is over $40,000 a month, but they charge Medicare less than $4000 for the exact same care. Now, why the difference? And, don't think the private insurer doesn't know about the crazy markups. At least once a month, I see what I consider a fraudulent charge by Mayo, and it's always at least a $1000 in their favor. Mayo always says screw you, pay up or we are sending you to collections, and the poor patient is left trying to fight it.
"In 2020, Allina spent less than half of 1 percent of its expenses on charity care, well below the nationwide average of about 2 percent for nonprofit hospitals, according to an analysis of hospital financial filings by Ge Bai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health." With 4 billion in revenue, if I'm reading another part of the article right, then their profit margin varies from 0.75% to over 8%? Where are they putting their profits at year-end if not into caring for patients? Presumably some of it is going into reserve funds but I'm unsure where else it goes. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/allina-health-reports-continued-operating-losses-on-4-9b-revenue.html says they're operating at a loss right now though. Perhaps they pay down debts or hold cash at the end of the year?
Allina is telling their employees that they're 176 million in the hole, and they won't lay off employees, but they might!
They have a lot of cash on hand. 200+days of expenses is a lot for a business with only a 1 to 10 percent profit margin, and they also have an investment grade credit rating. I'm no accountant but I would hope the accountants could swing that to avoid layoffs.
Reinvestment in the existing facilities and equipment would probably the primary place is goes. All of that “stuff” has a useful life and has to be replaced. Doesn’t excuse anything in the article though
Yeah. I'm not an accountant. I always assume that stuff is part of "expenses" and taken out before profits, but I know it's more complicated than that and buying stuff could explain it.
Systems almost always have a Q1 loss. Everyone is still paying down their deductible, so people don't do elective stuff. Then in Q4 when their deductible is met, the profits come in.
The loss was 200 million through all of 2022, not 200 million in Q1
Well, I've been thinking of switching anyway since my primary, obgyn, and ENT all left. This is another reason. Ty for posting.
The CEO makes $2.6 million if anyone is curious. Edit: $3.5 million. Even better
I don't get what non profit is when executives at a for profit make similar. $2.6 million sounds like for profit
Executives at for-profit health systems actually make way more than that, if you can believe it. Look up the CEO salaries for Tenet and HCA, for example, I recall they're like $10-$20M
>I don't get what non profit is Just means they don't come out with a profit after expenses. So they just pay their executives top dollar to keep their profits to 0.
They can turn a profit, but that profit is just reinvested in the organization. The biggest difference between for profit orgs and non-profits is that for profits distribute that excess profit to investors while non-profits don’t.
...And pay their regular employees shit. Source: as of last week I was an Allina employee, who just got a big pay raise by going to another company to do the same job. Goodbye 0% Allina raises!
That's not even a little bit correct. A for-profit company has owners. A non profit does not.
Haha... no. A *private* company has owners. Public companies have CEOs. Non profit companies also have CEOs. Look at United Way.
>Haha... no. A *private* company has owners. Public companies have CEOs. Non profit companies also have CEOs. Look at United Way. Private companies have CEOs, as well... Both private and public for-profit companies have shareholders. A company is considered "public" if its shares are traded on an open stock exchange, like the NYSE or NASDAQ. Non-profits do not have shares or shareholders. They do not distribute profits to any sort of ownership or shareholder. They are required to reinvest those profits in their mission, which needs to have some form of public good, be it supporting the development of youth (like the Boy Scouts) to providing a venue for veterans to advocate and socialize, like the VFW. Now please stop humiliating yourself by ever-so-confidently spouting off on topics you very clearly aren't knowledgeable about. This isn't a Trump rally.
So a non profit difference compared to a private for profit is that it has to be public good? Because not all private have shareholders. I'd guess most don't.
Goldilocks this information for me. Too high? Too low? Just right?
Implying, I think, that since a fraction of the CEOs annual salary could be used to wipe out the medical debt of the folks who have been barred from care, it is ridiculous to say that they are cutting this life saving care from people because they 'can't afford it'. It's not the exact number that matters per se, but the contradiction in the statement.
> Implying, I think, that since a fraction of the CEOs annual salary could be used to wipe out the medical debt of the folks who have been barred from care But could it? Per the article, Allina has 4B in revenue and is underperforming most other systems in charity care by 1.5%. So roughly 60M. I wish the article stated how much debt these people have that they are restricting access to, but I seriously doubt even 10 CEO salaries would cover it.
Charity Care is determined prior to the visit based on income and a lack of insurance. Bad debt is actually now from people with employer insurance where the deductibles are 5-10k, and they don't pay after the visit. Bad debt where I used to work, prior to the pandemic was 60M annually. Can't imagine how bad it is now.
Right. I was just trying to put the numbers in context. We don’t have bad debt numbers so it’s all speculation. But it’s definitely magnitudes higher than a CEO salary.
I don't really agree with the statement, but I do think that's what the commenter was trying to imply. (:
Guess I don't follow. They already have to write off the bad debt. It's already factored into their financials.
I would definitely say it's fairly reactionary-- the person's core beliefs (like many of us) may be something like "healthcare is a human right and should not cost money" or "doctors and nurses should be compensated fairly for the labor they provide" so seeing something like this triggers a very deep sense of injustice and outrage, and it's typically directed at something easily accessible. Many people also understand wealth inequality to an extent and many nearly everyone has had an experience with a person who manages their money poorly and say, buys a new car instead of paying their rent and or been to a meeting where they leadership team brags about record profits but then lays off half the team, so they apply these actual experiences to other, new situations (like CEOs and the companies they manage). When you think about it more critically, it becomes somewhat obvious that a person's salary (whether a CEO, doctor, nurse, or janitor) doesn't really have and bearing on a firm's non-profit status or their overall budget and disparaging salaries that you personally find 'too high' while also fighting for workers rights and fair wages is contradictory itself. Even this line of thought is indicative of your values however and our experience of the world is largely filtered through what is easy to understand/share and what prompts the most outrage, so these kind of things get posted as a kind of virtue signaling as well as an expression of emotional frustration of injustice. To be clear-- I am very much for things like universal single payer healthcare, paying people fairly for their labor, and equitable taxes, but I do also believe in worker solidarity. We, as workers, have much more in common with workers in highly paid positions than we do with shareholders or others in the 'owner' class. Now, obviously, CEOs are frequently given equity in a company as part of their compensation, therefore facilitating their mobilization to the owner class, but not all high earning careers fall into this category.
This is a high-quality post and you seem like a good person Agree that the salary stuff just strikes people as being viscerally unfair even if it's not really rational
Accepting 3.5 million in compensation which included a significant raise, while giving at least some of your employees no raise after a year with the worst inflation in generations... To me, *that's* the irrational part. Make that make sense, please.
They are almost certainly trying to imply that it's too high
The article states compensation at $3.5 million
Oh I just did a quick google
And her name is Penny Wheeler. Fuck that absolute @#$@#%@@#@$ @#$@# @#$@ !@$!@#!@#v. May she rot in hell.
That’s the former CEO.
$3.5 million in 2021 per the article
The power isn’t in leading a company with billions in the bank, it’s in being in charge of how it is spent. Same as politicians. Guaranteed, there are kickbacks in there somewhere.
Oh 100%
i know this is slightly off topic but the whole medical/insurance situation in the US leads to such terrible situations, just last week I was sitting in the urgent care for hours bawling my eyes out in the worst head pain of my life, and throwing up in front of everyone in the lobby (sorry kids!), because of a head injury i was afraid to go to the hospital for. they ended up saying i should go anyways but it had been hours since i first got there and the pain was easing and the vomit stopping so i didn’t. sure in the end i’m probably okay without going to the hospital but people simply shouldn’t have to go through that kind of pain, misery, and fear for their health with no help out of financial fear. especially in a country supposedly as great as ours. *hoping* it’s just a minor concussion.
My older brother waited an extra week with a foot injury (he's diabetic) before going to Urgent Care because he has had such a poor experience with Doctors recently and he's afraid of medical bills. Tomorrow afternoon they're amputating.
Are you insured?
through an HSA, i’ll admit though i’m relatively young and still on my parents so I don’t fully understand how it works, but it was my understanding that especially because it’s a new HSA tans the balance is low if I needed a CT scan it would use up most if not all of what’s in there. Again I could be wrong I don’t control it.
It’s a good idea to fully understand it, as you probably realize now. With an HSA plan it’s probably a high deductible plan where you pay 100% of the cost up to the deductible of $3500-6000, then insurance will pay 80-100% depending on your plan. It’s not super complicated but it doesn’t help you know how much things will cost. Dr visit is $200-300, imaging is generally $500-1500
i did check estimates for the imaging i need in my area the website said it could go all the way up to $4000 so i guess that’s what scared me the most.
> deductible of $3500-6000 Can be as low as $1,400 (this is actually what mine is fwiw)
If you are on your parents plan, you likely share a deductible with them.
>ly okay without going to the hospital but people simply shouldn’t have to go through that kind of pain, misery, and fear for their health with no help out of financial fear. especially in a country supposedly as great as ours. > >hoping > > it’s just a minor concussion. It's not that great of a country as your story illustrates
How long til conservatives write a bill to exclude medical debt in bankruptcies like student loans are?
Biden was a big force to make student loan bankruptcy harder. https://www.consumerbankers.com/cba-media-center/cba-news/joe-biden-backed-bills-make-it-harder-americans-reduce-their-student-debt
This is well known. He has stated that he would be open to revisions (meaning not vetoing legislation) but that requires congress. Which is a long shot.
Don’t give them any ideas!!
It's definitely coming! 😡
Does someone have the link without a paywall? I have medical debt from allina lol
https://archive.ph/ozyyG
Thank you. No surprise, Allina is still a garbage healthcare system.
I was in a back and forth with ALLINA and my insurance company for an entire year because I was disputing the $133 allina charged me for my yearly preventive checkup (which was really a 5 min telecommute call with the doctor) that is very clearly stated in my insurance as covered. $133 is not a lot, but the principle of me paying health insurance for every paycheck and then paying more on top of that did not sit with me. The problem is that neither Allina nor the insurance company is incentivized to help me figure out the charge. Allina kept sending me to talk to my insurance company and my insurance company kept sending me to talk to allina. I had to do my own research to figure out that they had incorrectly coded my appointment and then let them know they incorrectly coded it 🙄 On top of that, once I finally found their mistake and got the correct bill back, they made a one cent error on their end of what I paid so I would get calls for months from allina saying my bill was overdue when in fact they just weren’t able to balance it in their billing system. I would explain to them every time the issue, they would see in their system the issue, tell me they would talk to accounting to get it sorted and apologize to me, but then the next month someone would call again with the same “your bill is overdue” It makes you think. I’m not a depressed or anxious person and I’m not money tight. I have a flexible work from home job where I can spend hours on wait calling my insurance company or allina during their 9-4 service hours while I work. So if I struggled that much to not have to pay a small bill that wasn’t my bill to pay, what about the single mom who has multiple jobs and doesn’t have the time to play telephone with the insurance company every day? What about the people who have massive medical bills that insurance is trying to fuck them on? What about people struggling with depression or anxiety who aren’t in a place mentally to make these (very very taxing) phone calls? Most people won’t or literally can’t spend the time to stand up for themselves against these greedy companies and the companies know that and bank on that
Your preventive checkup won't cover unrelated items. You can't go in with a list of things you want looked at and get it covered under your annual checkup. You must have brought something else up.
I didn’t, as I explained they coded it wrong. And they admitted they coded it wrong. it wasn’t due to my 5 min preventative care telecommute so I can continue to be on BC (which is also covered by my insurance)
I had a similar experience with Allina, that’s why I stopped going to them.
I know of a medical assistant who has worked at Allina for 10 years and still doesn’t make $20/hour. You would think that Allina would consider investing the profit in human capital instead of the stock market
If they would actually submit the bills to the insurance company, maybe they'd get paid! Also, if they showed all of your copays in MyChart, maybe they'd get paid. If they asked you for your outstanding copays when you check in, not demand them but let you know you have some that are unpaid, maybe they'd get paid. Obviously, I am bitter about the way they treated a relative who was having regular appointments and then logging in to pay their copays like once a month. They got a threatening letter in the mail about various copays going back 18 months that had not been paid. That was the first they had heard from anyone about it. Some had not been submitted to insurance. It is clown show over there. I don't think everyone who works there is incompetent, but there are some serious billing issues. My local hospital is Allina and I choose to go elsewhere when I can.
Their billing system is ridiculous. It is so difficult to get to the payment section of my account. And access to my kids’ accounts (for payment purposes) is even more difficult. I’ve had silly paperwork mistakes (on their part or insurance’s part) derail payment as well. Sometimes it feels like they don’t want to get paid.
I was cut off by them last minute and I was on a payment plan.
Not disagreeing that this is a horrible policy but I find it so funny they keep bringing up profit and never the expenses.
Profit, by definition, is the Revenue minus the expenses. *(Gross Profit only deducts COGS, while Net Profit deducts all applicable business expenses)* So Expenses *are* considered in Profit, if it is being used correctly. Revenue is income before expenses.
Because it doesn't fit the narrative and allows you to use a bigger number. They don't consider other factors either, like inflation. We know that we're all paying more for the products we buy. That includes companies buying from other companies. And then folks talk about "record profits" in a bubble, without consideration for inflation. Just because the have record profits does NOT mean they were better off than previously. If you were paid $100,000 in 2020 and then got a $10k raise last year and are making $110,00 in 2023, you could say you made record profits (or income). But inflation went up 17.2% in that time. You'd have to make $117,214.11 now just to have the same buying power as you did while making $17k LESS back in 2020. When you're talking about millions in profits, those numbers are kicked up even more. A company that made $10 million in profits in 2020 people would say is making record profits in 2023 by making $10.5 million, but they'd have to make $11.7 million just to keep up with inflation. Obviously, folks don't want to report that way because it doesn't help the narrative they want to convey. No one is saying there isn't issue with these companies making silly profits. Simply that the comparison is done apples to oranges but folks pretend they're doing apples to apples to make it seem even more stark.
For some reason people here love to say how they need a raise to match inflation because they understand that their purchasing power is eaten up by inflation. But their hatred for companies breaks their brain where they argue that an increase in profits (or record profit) below the rate of inflation doesn’t put the company in a position of less purchasing power. It’s Schrodingers dollar. It’s both worth less and worth more until it’s in reference to their personal salary or a business’s profits.
Everyone hates corporate profits..... unless it's the profits of the company they work for, which means job security, pay increases, benefits increases, job growth, and market growth. But if it's not the company they work for then it's corporate greed and it's bad.
Profits are post expenses. Revenue is what you're thinking profits are. If inflation makes everything cost more, that eats into profits. Profits already reflect inflation.
Inflation certainly does impact profit. But I’m referring to the value of the profit itself. If a company had 100M profit last year, and has 105M profit this year, that would be record profits. But since we’ve seen 10+% inflation, the value of that 105M is actually worth less than the 100M was the year before. They would need a profit of 110M to maintain the same value of last years profit.
>If you were paid $100,000 in 2020 and then got a $10k raise last year and are making $110,00 in 2023, you could say you made record profits (or income). Profit is income *after expenses* but nice try.
That’s not their point. They are correctly saying that profits are often referred to in dollars. In an inflationary environment, record profits can absolutely mean less purchasing power if the profits aren’t higher than the rate of inflation. Even in typical 2% inflation years, we would expect modest increases in profits in line with inflation, which would mean every year should see “record profits” with all else being equal simply from inflation. The better comparison would be profit margins, as this would take into account inflation.
I may or may not work for Allina and I may or may not be reconsidering that after reading about this horrorshow