You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus

The Insurance Company Canard

by Hal_10000

Here’s a quick question.  Suppose you run a business and you’re not terribly moral.  Would you be in favor of legislation that:

(1) forces people or their employers to buy your product;

(2) forces people to buy the more expensive versions of your product;

(3) give them money to help buy your product; and

(4) creates a closed market so that they can only select from you and a few other companies?

Of course you would.  Who wouldn’t want that?  I mean, besides free market zealots.

Well, this is precisely what is happening with health insurance under Obamacare.  As Jacob Sullum points out:

If Obama’s plan works as advertised, it will be a huge boon to insurers. As he himself notes, “they’re going to have 30 million new customers” thanks to the government’s mandates and subsidies.

To distract us from the favor he is doing for insurers, Obama claims to be getting tough with them by demanding that they take all comers and charge them all the same rates, without regard to health. While abolishing risk-based pricing contradicts a basic principle of the insurance business, the industry has to weigh the loss of that freedom against the gain of government-guaranteed revenue.

Despite his talk about reining in “excessive” premium hikes, Obama’s plan commits him to keeping insurers financially sound so they can provide the coverage he is promising. Federal regulators, like their state counterparts, will find that “you can’t separate the underlying solvency of companies from the rates they charge,” as Wisconsin’s insurance commissioner recently told The New York Times. “From a consumer protection standpoint,” Kansas’ insurance commissioner agreed, “the most important thing we do is ensure the solvency of companies.”

This is why I could never be a Democrat.  This is why I sometimes get so angry listening to these jackasses on TV and the radio.  They are completely selling out our healthcare to the insurance companies on the one hand.  And then they turn around and say shit like this to established their liberal bona fides.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes that Democrats allowed the health care reform debate to be “hijacked” by insurance companies and other interests set on killing the bill.

Yes, Nancy.  It’s the evil insurance companies you are beholden to that “hijacked” the bill, not your fractious dim-bulb party and the understandable nervousness Americans feel about government intrusion into any industry.

Of course, insurance companies, for all their demonization, are not the real problem with healthcare anyway, as Jeffrey Anderson points out:

According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

One thing at a time, my friend.  Once the Democrats have control of the insurance companies (partly by delaying the Medicare SGR fix and buying off the AMA), they will then explain the inevitable cost over-runs as the result of greedy doctors and drug companies and reign them in.  Divide and conquer.

In all, the combined profits of the 14 largest American health insurers (the ones who crack the Fortune 1000) are $8.7 billion. That’s less than 0.4 percent, or 1/250th, of overall U.S. health-care costs, which are $2.5 trillion.

The Democrat are like a football team run by morons.  They really only have one play in the book—envy.  Greedy rich insurance companies, greedy rich doctors and greedy rich Republicans are the enemies. Democrats are the nobel gallants standing between us and exploitation.  And even as they climb into bed with insurance companies, unions and “green energy” interests, they continue to peddle this myth.

Whatever works, I guess.

(In other news, the Senate Parliamentarian has limited what the Dems can do with reconciliation.  Expect outrage and bombast and demonization of man who’s just doing his job.)

Comments

Posted by AlexinCT on 03/12/10 at 09:53 AM from

Every time I hear some moron hauling off on some private sector company, be it banks, insurance companies, energy companies, or something else, I point out that whatever grievance they have was indubitably caused by government and/or someone in government. In our highly regulated society, and even more highly regulated private sector, businesses are not allowed to do anything that some politicians didn’t either give them a law to make it so by, or a loophole to bypass something else with. I get so angry every time I hear some lefttard talk about deregulation, and doubly so when they claim it is republicans that do it. Democrats have for the last few decades hauled in the biggest campaign contributions from the biggest companies for a reason: they are the easiest to buy favors from. We are where we are today, both in the private sector and in healthcare, because of special favors or idiotic ideological policies that were more likely than not bought from a democrat.

Posted by on 03/12/10 at 10:18 AM from

What really chaps my ass is when the lefties talk about the greedy insurance companies, greedy doctors, greedy republicans, and basically how everyone on earth besides them is greedy. Liberals are never greedy.

In response to that, I always liked what Milton Friedman said about greed but it never sinks in with liberal retards. Here’s a link.

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