Originally posted by Nigel:
Australia has nationlized health care. But as I haven't lived there for almost 20 years I can't really comment on it. But the one thing that is obvious is that when health care is controlled by private business as it is here in the USA it is obvious that a large proportion of the money that goes into health care is taken back out as profit and not used for health care at all. Don't tell me that that is in the interest of public health. I don't have any more to say on the subject.
Nigel, I too thought that the greedy bastards at the health insurance companies were just raking in the dough while the country got a crappy return. However, the facts don't support that.
According to Morningstar Financial, a very reputable financal reporting group, the average Health Insurance Co.'s profit margin last year was 3.4% Which ranks them 87th out of the top 215 industries researched, just slightly above the median of 2.2%. The highest profit margins were beverages (25.9%), health care real estate trusts and application based software. Microsoft was 24.9%, Google was 20.6% and Exxon 9%.
If we're looking for a healthcare villain with regard to profits, I say we look at Pharmaceuticals and their profit margin of 16.4% which ranks them 7th out of 215. Others segments of healthcare with margins well above the median include healthcare information (9.4 percent), home healthcare firms (8.5 percent), medical labs (8.2 percent), and generic drugmakers (6.5 percent).
I support scrapping our current system and replacing it with a single payer plan, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/08/25/why-health-insurers-make-lousy-villains.html ------------------
Bill in Dayton
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