> They know I'll be net healthier with the vaccine, therefore more profitable to them.
How do you square this with the fact that in the US the same profit-minded insurance company is limited to a fixed profit margin based on the amount of claims paid? By law, they need to set their rates such that they pay out at least 80% (or 85% for some markets) of the premiums they collect. Practically the only way for them to make more money in the long term is to pay out more in the short term.
Personally, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Over time, insurance companies benefit more when medical costs for their customers are higher, not when they are lower. Maybe it's that they actually think that keeping you alive and paying premiums longer is better for their bottom line than having you die quickly? But I don't think it's as simple as thinking that they benefit more if you don't get sick.
I notice this paper is from April 2025. Do you know if this group has done any updates in the intervening 6 months to show how well their model seems to be working? For example, are they able to determine yet in Table 2 what portion of the costs are being borne by consumers versus businesses?
Trump has sown chaos by altering tariffs on a whim, and that messes up the economy worse than predictably high tariffs. Businesses can function under high tariffs, but if tariffs change and there is constant uncertainty, low-margin businesses can make profits only by accident.
After a quick glance at your submissions, you seem to be submitting things mostly to promote your own projects or your own writings. Posting things primarily to generate traffic to them generally isn't accepted here.
The "AI Guide" looks to have been automatically marked as dead, probably because so many of your earlier posts were flagged to death. I vouched to revive it because it seems like it might be of interest, but it's still another self-submission.
Overall, I don't know. It's on the edge. My guess would be that HN might not be a great fit if your goal is primarily self-promotion. You might email 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask for their opinion.
Yes, the actual refrigeration and heating cycles are always based on compressing and decompressing a gas. But the gasses used differ based on temperature range, and further you can have air to air, air to water, or water to water for the heat transfer. The overall costs are the system can be very different based on whether you have a split unit that requires a single wall penetration, a central unit in the basement with ducting, or a geothermal system that requires digging deep trenches or wells. It makes for difficult conversation when some people are talking only about air to air minisplits when others are including all of these and more.
While technically true, I think that's in tropical Africa. Are there also diseases that they carry in North America? Even without disease, I tend to agree with the OP that black flies are worse than mosquitoes, and don't think I've ever heard of anyone getting a disease from a black fly bite in the US or Canada.
You're mostly correct, but apparently not totally :) - I did think that it was further north, but the human cases are usually only in south and central america and africa.
Nonetheless, there are some.
In the US, the valedictorian of a high school is typically the person with highest academic grade point average. I've never heard of it considering sports participation, although Wikipedia does suggest that sometimes extra-curriculars are now being considered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valedictorian. But given his age and absent outside information, I think the fair assumption is that he won because he had the best grades in his courses.
I disagree, and think it's usually better to discuss articles like this than to flag them, but I appreciate your excellent explanation. Flagged or not, your explanation would have been a great standalone comment on the article.
How do you square this with the fact that in the US the same profit-minded insurance company is limited to a fixed profit margin based on the amount of claims paid? By law, they need to set their rates such that they pay out at least 80% (or 85% for some markets) of the premiums they collect. Practically the only way for them to make more money in the long term is to pay out more in the short term.
Personally, I'm not sure how to answer this question. Over time, insurance companies benefit more when medical costs for their customers are higher, not when they are lower. Maybe it's that they actually think that keeping you alive and paying premiums longer is better for their bottom line than having you die quickly? But I don't think it's as simple as thinking that they benefit more if you don't get sick.
Link about allowable Medical Loss Ratios: https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...
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