On May 28, 9:58*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article , Peter
wrote:

the recently enacted health care reform legislation that mandates that the
health insurance companies spend at least 85% of their income on payments to
beneficiaries for health care delivery? *The facts can be stubborn! *Many
companies were spending more than 15% of the premiums they receive on
profits,
marketing, perks for the top corporate execs, etc. *Not exactly consistent
with
your claim that their profit is "miniscule compared to the total premiums
collected."

* * *Most are at 85%, some 80%. From this they have to pay salaries for
administrations, etc. Overall, the profit margin for health insurance
companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year, according to data
provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and
slightly above the median of 2.2 percent.


Exactly. Norminn needs to take a lesson in accounting or economics.
Profit is what's left after paying for marketing, executive
compensation, etc. Why is it that Americans seem to accept that the
free market works and is the best solution for most of what we need,
yet they suddenly have a problem with it when it comes to certain
things like healthcare? A good example is auto insurance or
homeowner's insurance. Why is it that free market solutions with
some govt regulation work in those cases, but so many people reject
that solution for healthcare? The approach to healthcare should be
to look at how to improve the free market system, not abandon it. A
good starting point would be to enable competition across the entire
US so any health insurance company can sell a policy in any state.