Why Health Insurers Make Lousy Villains

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with obama and other libs.., its all about emotions and feelings....to get your way, trot out a few people with legit sad stories... then find a villian to blame it all on, then ride in on your white horse and say you are going to fix it..
who cares if you are going to nuke the whole plan so help a relatively small percentage of people?
who cares if your plan drives the nation closer to bankruptcy?
who cares if your plan actually will hurt more than help?
who cares if you the numbers you claim in your plan are so phony and full of tricks that if an accountant did the same thing he'd be in jail?
you get to say you got something done...and more importantly, you furthered your own objective... to hurt business and make the government bigger, and us all more dependent on it....
but no, im just a dumb white guy with health insurance who loves corporations more than people, so my words cant possibly contain truth..only the bleeding hearts really care...

WILL of PA 5:01PM March 09, 2010

Edwin, obviously math and finance are not your strong suits.
First of all, the 61 billion is not "yearly gross PROFIT" as you stated. It is total REVENUE. Big difference between REVENUE and PROFIT.
Second, if you divide the total REVENUE (in thousands) 61,251,100 by net income 2,490,700.....you get a profit margin of EXACTLY 4%. Not rocket science.
The fact is that profit margins of health insurance companies are miniscule compared to many other major industries. Don't drink the Obama koolaid. They are trying to demonize health insurance companies in order to justify their catastrophic health care takeover.
Another fact you might find interesting....during the health care "forum" you heard all these sob stories from the left about people whose claims were rejected by the nasty health care companies. The fact is that government run health care (Medicare and Medicaid) actually rejects TWICE AS MANY claims as private health care companies.
Don't drink the koolaid!!

markymark of CA 12:14PM March 08, 2010

I don't know where you got the number of 4% from. Following the link you posted, Wellpoint has a profit margin of almost double that at 7.75% in 2009:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WLP
Their yearly gross profit is over $61 billion dollars. Their year over year quarterly earnings growth is 727%. (Yes, that's not a typo.) This comes at a time when many companies, including my own, have seen dramatic decreases in revenues, gross profits, and earnings growth.
What? Did you think no-one would check your numbers?

Edwin H of CA 6:03AM March 06, 2010

Got any proof to back up your numbers or are we supposed to take your word for it?

Colt of LA 9:26PM March 05, 2010

Giovanni
Would you like your income to be cut. If these CEO are making these companies profitable why should they not be rewarded.
Besides I would rather work in a free market society than somebody telling me what I should get payed.
Why do you not go a step further and ask actors, actresses, Steve Job who has billion of dollars to stop making innovations and help pay their fair share in reducing 15 trillion dollar debt?
You being from California will be considered rich if you make over $250,000 according to Obama tax plan. Can you live on $250,000 before taxes in San Franisco.

alex tijerina of TX 6:49PM February 27, 2010

The reason that insurance companies don't have high profit margin is because they don't produce anything. They are middle men that approve the transfer of money. The more money they make the larger the salaries become. I don't know how some of these can say they are non-profit with the salaries that they pay.

Bill of NC 4:06PM February 25, 2010

Reality Check!
Consider that 30% of all insurance premiums are paid back out in commissions. In other countries a 15hr admin person signs people up. A 20% savings.
Another 20% is spent in efforts to NOT pay claims.
That is admin costs in the US average 25% of all premiums and world average is 6%. They have teams of analysts and lawyers hand processing all claims to find a way out. In other countries they are just processed by administrative personnel and a lot of it totally electronic (never viewed by human eyes). One dollar in every five we/our employers pay is waisted trying not to pay our claims.
The industries 3% profit is also after they pay executive compensation of 3%-5% of premiums to the top 10 executives. CEO of Atena last year made 25 million. That’s over 400K a week. Prior to exec comp they earned 6% last year. A year they lost more subscribers than in any year in history and the execs took half it (3%).
Also during good economic times more healthy people carry insurance. During bad times...like these, the less healthy tend not to drop coverage and the healthy do. This cuts their profits in times of high unemployment. When unemployment was at is lowest sense the 2001 recession in 2006 the industry earned 7.1% (after exec comp, was more like 12% before) profit and their sector ranked as the 21st most profitable.
Add it up, 20, 20, 7, 3=50%. Now do you know why other countries pay 50% less that we do? That is 8% of GDP compared to our 16%.
Its time to join the rest of the civilized world and take profit out of health care. Making money off of people being sick is wrong, and its even more wrong to let people die because they DONT make someone rich. We need single payer, universal free health care as a basic right, like every other industiralized county has, and they do it while spending less on healthcare than the US does now.

giovanni of CA 2:39AM February 23, 2010

First of all your rights are what are in the Constitution and heath care is not one spelled out under any amendment or clause. Don't bother with screaming about that "General Welfare" crap. You should have enough common sense to know the difference between promote and provide.
You scream about the "gatekeepers" at the insurance companies, but people game the system every day. Fake illnesses and injuries to get scripts to take or sell. I know people who do it and think that well they are not hurting anyone, but it drives up the costs for everyone.
As for lobbying Congress, everyone does it. The Unions got Obama to exempt them from the "Cadillac Plan Tax" which means that everyone else will pay more.
As to Canada...you will get your MRI if your a famous basketball player and get jumped ahead of people waiting months just to make sure you can play in next weeks game. Or a woman about to deliver four or five babies gets flown to a hospital in remote Montana because there is not a single hospital in all of Canada with enough incubators available. Saw that interview myself on the Today show as a fluff story, and it never occurred to the interviewer that there was a problem. The problem for Canadians with Obamacare, is the next time that remote Montana hospital might not have the incubators either.

Don Outlaw of GA 12:01PM January 31, 2010

I dont have too much to say except if you have medicare dont get Wellcare insurance because if you are in a carwreck they wont pick up the rest of hospitalization cost after the car insurance pays its part. I still owe thousands of dollars I cannot pay.

Kathy of FL 9:46PM January 26, 2010

First, profit is not villany. The acts that are performed to make those profits may indeed be villany. True enough, the best measure of how well a system is working is the satisfaction of the end user. In this scenario, our system fails miserably. Does anyone remember the sales job we were given when in the 1980s "managed care" was going to be the savior of the american public? We would be saved from nepharious doctors charging for cardiac procedures that were actually podiatry procedures? We were told because of the fraud epidemic amongst physicians coupled with those greedy lawyers gettting wealthy over inflated jury malpractice awards our premiums were high to compensate for such transgressions. We would save so much money if we approved "managed care". Is there a person out there that actually thinks we are better off since "Managed Care" has become part of the american healthcare system? In order to prove we were being saved from villany and at the insistance of Congress a system was developed based on a self-governed Quality Indicator data set. This system was adapted and codified and is now part of current regulations. This system is quite removed from any valuable measurement of performance. It is my opinion that the amount we spend as a country per patient has nothing to do with actual patient care,that's us. I would like to see a report on what percentage of the healthcare dollar actually goes in to treating patients. I believe a great deal of the healthcare dollar goes in to maintaining this third party "gatekeeper" system. It is nothing more than an unecessary ponderous layer of yet more management personnel that adds nothing to the positive outcome of the patient. Most primary care physicians under managed care have an average of 10 minutes to spend with each patient. Commonly, if that doctor wants to send his/her patient for a test or to a consult with a specialist, the doctor must get permission from the HMO etc. The person who grants or denies is a clerk usually with no medical training at all. They consult flowcharts and Policy and Procedures manuals that reflect the HMOs contract. This system is ponderous and most certainly not designed with quality care in mind. It is my opinion that if this entire layer of management was eliminated and the ability to manage care given back to the doctor and patient our system would save a phenomenal amount of money. Money that should be applied to patient care.I believe that the vast majority of doctors are honest.I received an email from a physician friend I worked with for several years. We had lost track of each other. I asked him where he went. He told me that he had had a practice in Oregon with 3 doctors, 2 assistants, and 20 clerks dedicated solely to dealing with the HMOs. I asked him "Where are you now?" He moved his practice and his family to New Zealand. He now has 2 partners, 1 assistant, 1 bookkeeper. He even makes house calls. Let's make sure we know what we are calling reform.

Roberta J. Quintero of CA 12:35AM January 11, 2010