Insurers can only spend 15% of premiums on admin spend (e.g. salaries, etc). That means if the CEO (and everyone else) wants more money, they need to pay more money to the hospitals, so their 15% cut grows.
Also, for beyond that, unspend premiums have to be refunded, which also cuts into the potential admin spend bucket, so it's best to always ensure your paying as much as possible in claims.
Plus, patients hate denied claims, because typically your forced to sign paperwork saying your responsible for anything insurance refuses to pay.
And with most health insurance spending being locked to employer benefits, the big market is the group market, which means your stuck with either getting your job's option(s), finding a new job, or not getting insurance basically.
In other words, you don't have a price choice as an individual in a group.
Hm, seems to be a bit of a contradiction between what you’re saying in terms of “insurers want to pay more” and the infamous tendency of insurers to deny claims as much as possible?
>typically your forced to sign paperwork saying your responsible for anything insurance refuses to pay
Now that is some sick shit. Making every doctor's visit a gamble you might lose, discouraging people from seeing a doctor.