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I think it goes beyond that. Having health care provided by people and companies who are incentived to make money off of people who dont understand the treatments and are often in no position to negotiate or price shop is just a system fraught with disaster.

According to the NAIC, the entire US health insurance industry had profit margin of less than 1% last year. You are paying $50k in insurance because surgeries cost $40k not because there's no price transparency.

How is that forcing you to have insurance? It looks like having insurance just saved you $38000! The real question should be why the hospital is charging $40k for a surgery. Public list prices are nice but what are you going to do when you have a car crash or heart attack, call around and price shop?

Oh there's plenty of blame to go round. But every time I go online the insurers take all the blame like making them non profit will suddenly cut health costs in half. And its sooo wrong.

This. Everyone loves to hate on the health insurers but they are the only ones who are actively trying to reduce excess costs and unnecessary spend.

Bloomberg best books for 2025 as recommended by CEO's https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-best-books/?utm_campaign=202512_BATC_subs_eng_books_businessleaders_subs_eng_books_businessleaders_dec2025&utm_term=20925533&utm_source=subs-email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=16080007 Edit: not necessarily business books but books recommended by business leaders.

@longterminvestor do you do cyber insurance at all? Theres an interesting discussion on the Beazley thread regarding a flood of new entrants, potentially poor underwriting and pricing taking a huge hit. Its a relatively young and untested market segment so i dont know if its a ticking time bomb or a growing opportunity. Wondering if youre seeing that (including other risks, not just cyber given the softening of pricing across all markets).

This was announced as a voluntary measure by insurers to reduce costs back in May or June

Don't forget the $320m of earnouts and post payments that, if typical for Baldwin, will get paid out in full. So closer to 4.5x revenues.

Interesting, right as the Westwood earnouts were done and the company should have become cash flow positive.

Wow, did not see the Mamdami/Trump love fest coming! They look like besties. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the closed door session that led to this.

Very true. I was focused on the "scaled" rationale but any cost savings would apply.

In my view, when Nick Sleep talked about it he used the term "shared cost savings" but it goes beyond that. Its basically thrilling your customers - and that means when you save costs instead of letting it drop to the bottom line, you share it with customers even tho you dont have to. Costco could easily raise the price of chickens or hotdogs and nobody would flinch - and it would drop immediately to the bottom line. Its the fact that they dont that brings in customers. You just know that Costco doesn't see you as a wallet but as a long term partner they need to keep pleasing. You can see companies that lost their way on this like Disney and Las Vegas. They used to be all about absolutely blowing away visitors with the experience and then charging what was necessary to profit off that. Then they switched gears to how much profit can I pull from visitors and whats the bare minimum I need to offer to get them to spend more. Short term gain but harms the brand.

Scaled cost savings is primarily 2 things: a) volume savings - discounts from large purchases, negotiated price reductions from guaranteed volumes, etc; and b) spreading fixed costs over larger volumes.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. The idea of scaled economics shared (as i understand it) is that the reduced cost per unit benefit from increasing scale is shared with customers. For Costco (Sleeps favorite) the whole idea was the massive buying benefits were passed to consumers with lower prices thereby driving more scale - a flywheel. The increased profits come not only from the increased sales but also through the scaled cost savings (hence the "shared" part).

It wasnt a comment on your time management. Oh and I retired very early years ago.

You sound like the person who claims to not care about anything but still feels the need to argue and comment on everything.

Ive called people who are trying to prevent or dont want the files to be released protectors of pedos. Or at least that was my intention.

TDS isnt what leads me to conclude Trump is a pedo. The increasing evidence from his BFF does. And it affects my personal life (and that of all Americans) because of what he is seemingly willing to do in order to keep them from coming out.

Reds literally posted reasons for them not to be released and you chastised me for not responding to it because it was plausible. If nobody is against the files being released why all this commentary today? Shouldn't we.be in the same side? And yet I'm attacked for it because politics trumps rationality.

I have a daughter. Pedophiles are an issue i struggle to let go of. Especially when they are President.

I do really enjoy how all the cultists (and people i thought could stay above the cult and think independently on issues) find it more prudent to spend their time attacking me for supporting the release of the files than just saying "yup, let's shine a light and go after all those jnvolved in protecting pedos". When your desire for political division and to "own the libs" exceeds the desire to prosecute pedophiles..... As additional details come out (and they will) and the party moves away from Trump it will be fascinating to see at what point people here decide to publicly get off the Trump bus.

What other possible reason would you have for not only not wanting them to be released but for many in the administration, actively working to stop their release?

Epstein is probably the most famous convicted pedophile in history. He was tied to wealthy, famous, powerful people who it appears were possibly blackmailed. Releasing the files that detail his life and his deeds and going after those who were involved or covered it up should not be controversial. Especially when one of the is the President of the United States!! The question is why you would oppose releasing the files - especially if doing so proves innocence or exonerate you. This is one of the most horrific crimes a person can do.

Biden has never been tied to the Epstein files. And if someone in his administration buried or obstructed their release they should be prosecuted fully. I mean come on. We are all intelligent people. Can we not agree that pedophilia is bad and everyone connected to this should be held fully accountable? The fact that people are twisting themselves to protect pedophiles by not releasing the info because it might harm Trump is simply insane and true cult behavior.