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Andy, I couldn’t agree more. Health insurance companies make decisions on a daily basis that can mean life and death for their customers, and those kinds of decisions shouldn’t be made with the most important factor being the company’s fiscal bottom line.

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Thanks for using your whole name!

Nobody said profits are bad. (A word cannot be good or bad; only people have the ability to be good or evil. I hope that you wish to be a good person.)

I quoted MSNBC’s business report that United Healthcare’s profits increased 155% in one year, a year when some other businesses were losing up to as much as 60% of their value or even worse completely failing. If this discrepancy between a health insurance provider and business in general doesn’t give you cause for concern, then I guess you should state exactly what you think is a fair rate of return for a business as a general rule of thumb.

Your statistics about ranking health insurance profit margins at 86 percentile seemed out of line with my expectations for an insurance provider. What is your source for this ranking?

Your claim concerning the lack of profitability of the health insurance industry sent me off on a search for information this morning. I found the following information at CNN Money’s Fortune 50 most profitable industries report. To get an overview of the healthcare industry I have summarized all of the rankings for a variety of health care providers, not just insurance companies. For comparison, the only other industry group that I could see of comparable scope is the Energy industry (oil drilling, refining, energy, utilities etc.) Both groups have 6 to 8 participants in the top 50 most profitable. To make a general comparison I averaged the rankings and percentages. See the tables below.

Revenues
Industry Avg rank Profit as % of revenue
Energy 22 9.73%
Health 22.3 8.58%

Assets
Industry Avg rank Profit as % of Assets
Energy 23 6.25%
Health 32 4.27%

Equity
Industry Avg rank Profit as % of Equity
Energy 23.3 17.08%
Health 33 12.50%

I think you are under estimating the percentage of un-insured at 4-5% of “documented citizens.” What do you mean by documented citizen? So I went to the US Department of Health and Human Services Medical Expenditure Survey report that states that for the population under 65 years of age the un-insured rate is 22%. For the total population the rate is 19+%. I suspect the difference is a result of Medicare.

I find it amusing that when President Obama is positive about reforming health care you are opposed to it. Yet when President Obama is critical of “waste and abuse,” you accept his word on it.

In my opinion, discussing only health insurance will not solve our nations problems concerning healthcare. If you consider all of the money already spent for all aspects of health related expenses (insurance only being one segment) the amount is enormous. I believe that we are already paying enough to provide health care for all, especially if a one payer Medicare plan is used!

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How much is spent in total annually in the US on health care, including insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, non-covered expenses, pharmaceuticals, etc?

Do you know?

What is the sum total of awards for malpractice cases annually?

Do you know?

If you can’t answer these questions, your comments on tort reform lack any factual basis.

Who will determine what a frivilous law suit is?

Will there be a shopping list for damage?

For example if the Doctor and hospital amputate the wrong leg, will that be worth Five dollars?($5.00)

Flex accounts do not revert back to the business, they go to the government.

I suspect that you have never been faced with a Cobra bill. Cobra is an outrageously expensive boon for the insurance companies whereby you are underwritten as a single participant instead of a member of a risk pool.

What track record of entitlement programs are you talking about? Tell me the name of the program and the year it was over budget?

You like so many others are simply regurgitating rumours, half-truths, and completely false statements with no truthful facts to back up your illogical assumptions.

I can not understand anyone thinking that an insurance company is going to give better service than any government agency. The insurance companies entire motive to be in existence is to get there greedy, thieving hands in your wallet and leave as little as possible for you.

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Most Democrats, Republicans and all Republicrats do not have the moral condition necessary to see the “health care debate” through to the only logical end–single payer.

Our health should not be “for profit.”

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I would be opposed to limitations on malpractice events but I would support independent reviews of awards after accountability has been determined.

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