For brokers serving small employers (e.g. firms with under 50 employees) a commission rate of around 4% to 6% of premiums (so likely not including extra incentive payments) is typical (numbers again from ChatGPT). It’s less for bigger employers, but it’s real money in the system.
People and companies buying insurance directly is helpful.
You have pharmacy benefit managers that got recently quite unpopular with politicians, so there’s also progress, but the system is really big and complex and at every point someone has an interested to take their cut.
Generally you have a system where a lot of money is flowing. Both patients and doctors often don’t even now how much money is flowing for a simple healthcare service.
One interesting aspect: The government does not set the prices for individual services in medicare. They are instead set by the AMA which is an advocacy organization. So inter-AMA politics determine which services get reimbursed how much and I would expect that there’s also plenty of non-above the board actions going on there.
For brokers serving small employers (e.g. firms with under 50 employees) a commission rate of around 4% to 6% of premiums (so likely not including extra incentive payments) is typical (numbers again from ChatGPT). It’s less for bigger employers, but it’s real money in the system.
People and companies buying insurance directly is helpful.
You have pharmacy benefit managers that got recently quite unpopular with politicians, so there’s also progress, but the system is really big and complex and at every point someone has an interested to take their cut.
Generally you have a system where a lot of money is flowing. Both patients and doctors often don’t even now how much money is flowing for a simple healthcare service.
One interesting aspect: The government does not set the prices for individual services in medicare. They are instead set by the AMA which is an advocacy organization. So inter-AMA politics determine which services get reimbursed how much and I would expect that there’s also plenty of non-above the board actions going on there.