VIO: "Profits in the billions is evil!"

I remember having this conversation. Profit Margins are DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the amount of money put into the business. Yes they may make billions in profit BUT they invest 10 or 100 times that much to get that return, and for their trouble they get a measley 6% return. You can beat that return in some high yield Savings accounts and CD's.

Profit is a word characterized as evil, by those who wish to steal what others have earned rather than make money themselves.

Why is it that the government demonizes the insurance industry for making money out of the premiums they charge for health insurance? That money compensates the people that make the insurance companies work. Are we to believe that the same government that gives us the post office and the dmv can spend less money on administrators than the insurance companies do? You may choose to believe that would happen, but practical experience with government employees tells all rational people that the problem would be far worse if the government was in charge.

You're missing the point, Rockefeller isn't attacking insurance company profits as much as he's using the dollars spent on administrative costs to suggest that individual policy holders are getting screwed by their insurance company, thus making these people more skeptical of reports coming from insurance companies and more receptive to whatever the Democrats are offering.

Administrative costs are almost always higher on a per-person basis for small customers than for larger customers, a result of being able to spread admin costs over a larger base (as well as some of the automated aspects of large groups). So when Rockefeller uses these numbers to make individual policyholders think they're getting screwed, when in fact their lower recovery is just a consequence of their lower buying power.

And of course, this would alleviate itself if individuals and small companies were able to group themselves... but that isn't something the Democrats will ever agree to do.

As an aside, the left demonizes OIL profits and proposes windfall taxes...however the Government makes double or more "profit" in taxes what the Oil companies do and make zero investment and take zero risk.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/1139.html

Insurance companies could operate with much lower premiums if all their employees worked for free. That is ridiculous though, and will never happen. The government will not be able to take over the role of the insurance companies and eliminate that issue. In fact, the government will make the problem FAR WORSE. Once those government employees are entrenched into their positions, they will be far less productive than anyone in the private sector, and they will be impossible to remove. This happens in every government endeavor, so it would happen in the health industry too. Once again, the government would take over a sector of the economy with the stated goal of alleviating problems that they themselves created while actually exacerbating the problems.

Democrats are not interested in 'reform', they want 'control'.

Health care reform:
1. Allow interstate sales
2. Tort reform
3. Get rid of 'mandated coverage'. Allow the consumer to select the coverage. An 86 year old woman does not need "maternity care" in a one-size-fits-all package.
4. Government subsidized insurance for the "uninsurable" AKA pre-exiting conditions.

What would that take? Maybe 10 pages at most?

10 pages? But the Constitution is only 10 pages and we all know how flawed the Libs think it is! You must have at least 1000 pages so you can hide things in it!

Comments #6 and #8 - How true. You really nailed it. If only our elected officials would read this post and pay attention.
Madalyn

IIRC, this Rockefeller is one of THE Rockefellers, and reasonably wealthy. Where does he think that fortune came from? If he wants to maintain his ideological purity, he can send me a check for his net worth.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Since it's apparently much more likely that we will have to spend the rest of our lives under a government insurance program than Cigna, I think it's only fair to demand the same analysis of Medicare or Medicaid.

Something I've never seen in all the bullshit coming out of Worshington is just how much it will cost the government to administer the public option Leviathan. How many federal employees will be required to run the Great Obama Death Star? In the UK, the NHS comprises 1.4 million people, making it the third largest employer in the world. It's the single largest item in the British national budget. But that's OK -- our Healthcare System For A Brighter Tomorrow will be free, somehow.

Something else I never hear about is just what the Congress plans to do about the enormous cost of routine fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.The Office of the Inspector General currently has 1,500 employees investigating fraud on an ongoing basis. From HHS testimony before Congress: "The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association estimates conservatively that at least 3 percent [of $2 trillion annual healthcare costs] or more than $60 billion each year--is lost to fraud."

No, save all that for later. In the meantime, just two numbers will suffice:

1. How much is the TOTAL cost of Medicare and Medicaid this year?

2. How much, exactly, did the government pay out in real money for actual medical care, for doctors, hospital costs, procedures, surgery, drugs, therapy and so on?

Ignoring all of the other anciliary costs buried elsewhere in the federal budget, the difference between the two is the price of government incompetence in administering anything.

Incentive was an interesting choice of words.

For profit health insurance companies have an incontestable financial incentive to deny claims.

Every dollar saved is a dollar added to their bottom line.