[0] - https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/trustFundSolvReport2025...
Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increase in cost of utilities is mostly from increased costs for the transmission and distribution grid, but CPUC has basically zero information for the public to understand why they keep on handing over more money to the big utilities. There definitely seems to be massive corruption but where is it and what is the actual mechanism? It's so well hidden and sophisticated that if there is corruption nobody understands what the F is going on.
How do you replace a state-sponsored monopoly like a utility into something competitive? I don't know, when I learned econ 101 utilities were given as the example of a "natural" monopoly. But clearly that's not working out... maybe it just needs to be "state" rather than "state sponsored monopoly." The only other state sponsored monopoly we really have is the state itself. What does the public gain by allowing monopoly utilities that giving away the public's money to investors? The incentives are all off.
Between ghost networks, death panels that deny you treatment, and the nature of deductibles, you have no fucking idea what you're buying, and whether or not you're getting ripped off.
> "The largest increase by a wide margin was for employee health insurance, which saw an average increase of 14.2 percent among manufacturers and 12.9 percent for service firms"
> "The next largest cost increase was for utilities, which climbed by 8.5 percent over the past year for both types of firms, with about 15 percent of all respondents reporting increases of 20 percent or more"
> "Business insurance—which includes liability, property, auto, and workers’ compensation, among other things—climbed by about 7 percent, on average, for service firms and by 7.5 percent for manufacturers"
I alluded to this before on HN [0] - much of the insurance woes faced are the legacy of the COVID pandemic, as a large portion of workers compensation funds are insolvent and healthcare pools are heavily stressed, leading to perverse incentives.
My car insurance went up 30%, in one year. Tried pricing around and it's not much better. Took an online "safety class" and got an 8% discount.
Edit: can't reply
> This started decades before COVID, and has been summarily ignored for the entire time. We’re still insuring properties in areas we known sea level rise and climate change make uninsurable
It's not property insurance that's causing the issue as I as well as the article pointed out.
The market isn’t going to correct itself now that we have enough data to know where to squeeze next, and how hard it can go. The only way to unwind this disaster is meaningful regulations and wholesale reforms.
* Stop tying healthcare to private insurers and employers. State-level single-payer models by default via fixed payroll deductions per employee, and let the government dictate or negotiate costs.
* Re-work incentives for efficient utility usage. Incentivize self-generation for power through lower electric rates if a certain percentage of your consumption is generated on-site, for instance. Also, stop subsidizing huge consumers (like data centers) by raising customer rates, and keep expanding renewables and battery storage to depress costs in the long haul
* Those insurance rates keep going up because healthcare continues rising and repair costs are increasingly more expensive or on par with replacement costs. Right to repair can lower auto/property insurance rates over time by making shit repairable, and liability/workers comp can begin coming down once healthcare is meaningfully addressed
* Not being mentioned in the report (but raised by other commenters) is the general cost of living will continue driving wages higher (along with costs to replace those wages from injury or loss via insurance schemes) until and unless we actually address the underlying crises. This means lowering housing costs, lowering rent, lowering transit costs (either through cheaper cars or expanded public transport, ideally both), lowering food costs, lowering utility costs, lowering healthcare costs, lowering childcare costs (universal childcare or incentives for more single-earner/single-income households), etc.
This report hits the highlights, but this is a huge issue that’s only going to get worse if we don’t start seriously addressing the myriad of root causes.
Most state-run workers compensation and Medicaid funds are already insolvent. Until that gets resolved, no attempt at creating a single payer fund is possible.
> stop subsidizing huge consumers (like data centers) by raising customer rates, and keep expanding renewables and battery storage to depress costs in the long haul
Most DC projects in the US have already integrated renewable and battery storage systems thanks to Biden-era subsidizes and capacity building.
Utilities are using data centers as a scapegoat - the reality is most are stuck with fiscal liabilities due to COVID along with insurance and raising prices as a result.
> Right to repair can lower auto/property insurance rates over time by making shit repairable, and liability/workers comp can begin coming down once healthcare is meaningfully addressed
I support right-to-repair at a personal level as a tinkerer, but that wouldn't move the needle for the insurance problem.
The big issue is the COVID pandemic era liabilities that continue to require to be paid out to this day.
It's the same for workers comp as most workers comp funds are already insolvent.
> Not being mentioned in the report (but raised by other commenters) is the general cost of living will continue driving wages higher...
Becuase that's not something that dramatically impacts the bottom line in most industries - most businesses can afford increasing salaries a couple dollars an hour by reducing capex next year, reducing hours for existing employees, or moving employees to the salaried bucket.
But if my insurance premiums are constantly increase by 7-20% YoY it becomes difficult to manage.
Edit: can't reply
> What do you (sic) proscribe as a solution then?
F#ck if I know.
This is a polycrisis, and each state will have to solve stuff individually because of the federal nature of the US. The pandemic was brutal and we're still facing feeling it's reverberations to this day.
Medicare might not technically be a monopsony, but it acts like one, and all the rest of us working folks end up paying the gap that rounds out the rest of the costs.
We have a few generations that have had easy lives, where they had easy access to homes, to higher education, to wealth building, and decided to cut off access to the same as soon as they got it, while still living off the labor of current working people that are not even allowed to build new apartments next to these wealthy people while they pay for all their health care.
The economy is a massive multiple player rpg with a point system economy that's fixed by federal and state laws, and it's been rigged both at the health care level and at every level to extract wealth for those that had it easy in the past.
State Medicaid and Workers Compensation funds were already insolvent before the 2024 election, and as such most states lack the fiscal overhead needed to fully support a fully funded single payer program today.
It would end up the same way the NHS has in the UK.
Vast swathes of the US are deeply fiscally troubled due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, and if that is not solved then we cannot even start to contemplate single payer.
This should not be used to justify austerity which is not the answer and does more harm than good, but points out that a reckoning is needed. From my personal experience dealing with the current crop of state and local politicos, it's looking dicey in portions of the US.
The core issue is it suddenly destroys a large number of companies and removes millions of unnecessary jobs from the economy. That’s a great deal of wealth and a great number of voters who don’t want you to save hundreds per month by making them redundant.
That's partly because we have a doctor shortage here (medical schools collude to limit the number of new doctors created each year).
Another part of the problem is the bloated administrative bureaucracy of hospitals in the US, we well as the fact that you aren't allowed to build a new hospital (and yes, this is actually true) unless you can prove that a hospital is needed in a particular community.
With no competitive market for healthcare providers, nor a competitive market for places where they work, why shouldn't they extract as much as they can from the rest of us?
They get away with it, too, because "medical doctor" is one of the highest trusted and most reputable professions. It's badthink to discuss these things in polite company.
Until we fix those things, it simply doesn't matter how the insurance/payment system works. Every time I hear that we need to get rid of private insurers, nobody can seem to explain how doing that will save more than 10-15% despite the fact that insurance companies have a statutorily-limited profit margin.
Odd how the most popular programs in the US, social security + medicare, are the ones with zero means testing.
Maybe let's not blame one of the few only noble professions left in our greed fueled world.
Blame the hospital administrators or pharmaceutical reps before you start blaming doctors.
Health insurance companies have profit margins around 5% or less. Hospitals are half that. A Subway franchise has a higher profit margin. That’s just not where your healthcare dollars are going.
I agree that certificate of need laws should be repealed to increase competition between healthcare facilities. That only impacts some states, not the whole country.
https://nashp.org/state-tracker/50-state-scan-of-state-certi...
Narrow banking now.
This is something the Federal Reserve can actually fix. Give every single US person (I am not a lawyer and I can't define what counts as a US person) a fee-free bank account with the Federal Reserve. Cut out the middle men of commercial banks. I think that alone will go a long way to drive down business costs.
Never, ever going to happen.
What you said, fee free banking + KYC + free instant transacting is something we definitely need, even if it hurts JP Morgan Chase a little bit.
This hits TFA's culprits, rising insurance and utilities costs. They're just the symptoms, not the source.
Until the early 2000s, things were built to last, solid build, simple.
Now, even fridge has AI in it like what the actual f!!! Cars are tablets on wheels, Tesla and others, rather than just being cars.
And this weird desire to please modern audience costing movies, products, videos games billions of dollars, closing studios thousands of jobs lost unable to make the investment back as consequences and yet, companies seem to do not read the room.
stanleykm•2h ago
kurthr•1h ago