Before headin’ out to the ole punkin patch yesterday I was watching the Saturday FOX News business block and Brenda Buttner was interviewing some dolt who was lambasting health insurance companies. She dropped — in a question — the fact that health insurance companies run about a 2.5% profit margin. I’d never heard that before and since I was heading out I didn’t follow up.
Commenter JJ to the rescue. He sent me this story that says largely the same thing.
Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making “immoral” and “obscene” returns while “the bodies pile up.”
Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.
Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.
Some other good info at the link. That is a nice arrow in the quiver to use against those who bash “greedy” insurance companies…
In a similar vein… here’s a quiz… what one entity denies the most health care benefit claims in the U.S. — almost double of all private insurers (save for Aetna)? That’s right. Medicare.
From The Heritage Foundation’s blog The Foundry:
According to AMA’s National Health Insurance Report Card, Medicare denies 6.85 percent of its claims, higher than any private insurer (Aetna was second, denying 6.80 percent of its claims), and more than double any private insurer’s average.
What’s fascinating is that The American Medical Association (AMA) has endorsed a public option, despite the fact that “some member physicians at the group’s annual meeting [in June] likened the notion to communism.”
The Obama administration repeats ad nauseum that we need a government option to “keep insurance companies honest” and to make sure they don’t deny anyone coverage. Well what does one say about the fact that Medicare denies more claims than private insurers?
President Obama has promised that if we like our health insurance we can keep it. But will those who are forced into the public option–which has been estimated to be minimum of tens of millions of currently insured Americans in addition to those “46 million” currently uninsured–be satisfied with their care given that the government program Medicare’s denial of claims outranks any private insurer’s?
AMA is effectively endorsing a public plan that is the largest denier of claims. How the public option would provide health care to patients is hard to understand.
Doctors who are rich enough to retire under decades of income produced under the old system and doctors too young to know what the hell they’re talking about must be driving this AMA suicide support for a public option. The words “doctor” and “shortage” will become common if this option passes.
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It seems that the Democrats always need a fake bad guy to push their agendas. They can’t get people rallied around any of their plans because when you look past the smoke and mirrors they’re all the same; higher taxes, bigger government. So they have to get people motivated out of hatred for the “enemy.” Insurance companies, oil companies, bitter clingers, the list goes on.
Great. My new job comes with Aetna. Another reason to want to have jobs decoupled from health insurance.
As for the Dems. It’s always easier to hate someone rather than something, especially when the “thing” is an abstraction. Which is why the Alinsky rule of “personalize it” works.
There’s always someone to blame. Unfortunately, they usually run out of those, just as they run out of other people’s money.
Only a small percentage of doctors belong to the AMA, and many doctors have been speaking AGAINST the public option. AARP is losing members because of the agency’s support. Many voices that represent the insurance companies, medical personnel, and retired folk (who VOTE) are working hard to convince Congress not to pass a health bill that includes or lays the groundwork for the public option. All of the comments above are relevant–scapegoating is always successful if no one shows the fallacies involved.
Welcome to Threedonia, Delores!
The Dems in congress are just jealous – because they actually CAN make a profit – miniscule, though, it is.
Let’s face it, the truth is not Obama’s friend. If you stand up to lies you are lambasted for being in the pocket of ‘big insurance.’ Yes, they need the lies to further their agenda.
God help us if this madness becomes law. An insidious side effect of the public option is that every person is necessarily reduced to a commodity for the state. The dignity of the individual is gone and each person become a unit whose only value lies in what they can contribute to the almighty state.
Tonight’s 60 Minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml
The segment about Medicare fraud is worth watching. They think about 60 Billion a year goes to fraudulent billing. And the government thinks they can handle all of health care?!?!?!?!?!?!
Government couldn’t fix a broken shoe lace.
I always laugh when people attack health insurance companies’ profits and not just because people seem offended that companies expect profit in a free market economy. Prior to the government passing new and laughable regulations last summer in the MIPAA bill my company was the fastest growing insurer in the US and even at that we made a whopping 19% profit, yes 19%. We’re such scoundrels. On top of that in my particular niche of the industry we are capped at 15% profit, anything above that we have to return via reduced premiums or increased benefits.