The Outrageous Profits Of Insurance Companies
Oct 25, 2009 Political
The Democrats have demonized the insurance industry as evil corporations that have skyrocketing profits at the expense of the people. These are some of the claims made by the left:
“I’m very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers'”obscene profits.”
“Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed.” Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership.
“Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe.” A MoveOn.org ad. My Way News
The unfortunate thing for the Democrats is that the profits of the insurance industry are not that high. According to the article, entities such as Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo all have higher profits than the insurance industry which sits at around 2%.
The insurance companies cannot be gouging people in order to make record profits if their profits are anything but record and are eclipsed by many other entities. The left has to claim that the insurance companies are raking people over the coals and making record profits in order to push its agenda of taking over our health care system. If profits are not the reason for high medical costs then there must be something else and whatever it is, it will not be cured with government running the health insurance.
The left did this with the oil companies. They parroted the record profits made by the oil companies but discussed it in raw dollars. In reality, the profit margin was about 10%, reasonable for a business. During that period of time Microsoft had profits greater than 20% but we did not hear much about the cost of MS software and how the company was exploiting people. Instead, we heard the Democrats harp about the billions in profits made by oil companies as those very Democrats discussed how they would “take” the money and redistribute it to the people. Very Hugo Chavez of them.
Insurance companies are in business to provide a service and to make money. They make money but not too terribly much considering they rank 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries.
There are 34 industries ahead of the insurance industry so perhaps the government should be going after them and their “obscene” profits. Obviously, the profits of those industries must be obscene if they are better than the insurance industry that the government has already pronounced as obscene.
The Democrats are using the Alinsky playbook in order to marginalize the “enemy” and turn everyone against insurance companies.
Seems to me the insurance industry is not so bad after all.
Now, I wonder what the profit margin of the tort lawyers was during that time.
Anyone want to bet they did better than the insurance industry?
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Tags: Democrats, insurance industry, Obama, obscene profits