You want the truth? The insurance companies are an industry which offers a product. The reason they are getting more and more screwed up is government control. Will the takeover of our economy by bureaucrats in Washington ever end? And MORE IMPORTANT - when are we going to demand they stop!
Washington's latest target is America's "fat cat" health insurance companies. A closer look reveals a vital but vulnerable industry, not the greedy, profiteering image pushed by health reformers.
We've seen "Big Oil" dragged to Capitol Hill to be slandered by power-hungry senators and congressmen for finding, extracting and refining the lifeblood commodity of the global economy. We've seen the pharmaceutical industry drawn and quartered for doing what it takes to discover, make and market lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs.
The latest villain in the politicians' demagogic fantasyland is private health insurance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused private insurers of making "immoral profits." And they're a prime target for taxes to pay for the health care revolution Congress and the White House have planned.
But in fact, as we pointed out recently in these pages, this is an industry that actually lags many others in the U.S. economy. Plenty of other sectors of private industry are doing far better.
And some of the things Washington has planned — in particular a "public option" — would leave private insurers bankrupt.
As the Associated Press recently reported, the health insurance industry's profit margins tend to be in the 6% range, not impressive at all when compared with other areas of insurance. Margins shrank to 2.2% last year, with health insurers ranking 35th on the Fortune 500 list of industries. As a result, the credit ratings of some leading insurers have been downgraded to negative. READ at IBD
Showing posts with label health care insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care insurance. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Something Rotten in the State of Massachussets-Let's Not Do It!
Regarding Government run HealthCare why isn't Washington looking at the fiasco that is now occurring in Massachusetts thanks to former Governor Mitt Romney? There's a Law in that state that mandates every individual to buy health insurance or face a penalty. Surprise of surprises, the young people have found out a way to circumvent the obligatory purchase of a product they DON"T WANT! The Wall Street Journal article's subtitle is "Massachusetts shows how ObamaCare would really work". So having this example of "something's rotten in the state of Massachusetts" why aren't our politicians gleaming some insights and lessons from this? The only thing that occurs to me is POWER AND MONEY. What else could it be? Read this editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
...Yet these mandates allow people to wait until they're sick, or just before they're about to incur major medical expenses, to buy insurance. This drives up costs for everyone else, which helps explain why small-group coverage in Massachusetts is so much more expensive than in most of the country. Mr. Romney argued -- as Democrats are arguing now -- that the individual mandate would make that problem disappear, since everyone is always supposed to be covered.
Well, the returns are rolling in, and a useful case study comes from the community-based health plan Harvard-Pilgrim. CEO Charlie Baker reports that his company has seen an "astonishing" uptick in people buying coverage for a few months at a time, running up high medical bills, and then dumping the policy after treatment is completed and paid for. Harvard-Pilgrim estimates that between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of its new enrollees stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average incurred about $2,400 per person in monthly medical expenses. That's about 600% higher than Harvard-Pilgrim would have otherwise expected. (READ AT WSJ).
...Yet these mandates allow people to wait until they're sick, or just before they're about to incur major medical expenses, to buy insurance. This drives up costs for everyone else, which helps explain why small-group coverage in Massachusetts is so much more expensive than in most of the country. Mr. Romney argued -- as Democrats are arguing now -- that the individual mandate would make that problem disappear, since everyone is always supposed to be covered.
Well, the returns are rolling in, and a useful case study comes from the community-based health plan Harvard-Pilgrim. CEO Charlie Baker reports that his company has seen an "astonishing" uptick in people buying coverage for a few months at a time, running up high medical bills, and then dumping the policy after treatment is completed and paid for. Harvard-Pilgrim estimates that between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of its new enrollees stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average incurred about $2,400 per person in monthly medical expenses. That's about 600% higher than Harvard-Pilgrim would have otherwise expected. (READ AT WSJ).
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Politicians Love to Tell Us That They Will Solve All Our Problems
Most of the uninsured are actually young people who CHOOSE NOT to have insurance because they want to spend that money on other things. About 11 million people do not sign up for the free health care insurance available. Watch this video produced by Nick Gillespie at the Wall Street Journal. Do we really need politicians to "solve" this problem - again?
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