The myth about the high profit margin of the health insurance companies

As the table above of Profit Margins by Industry shows (data here for the most recent quarter), the industry “Health Care Plans” ranks #86 by profit margin (profits/revenue) at 3.3%. Measured by profit margin, there are 85 industries more profitable than Health Care Plans (included here are healthcare plan providers as Cigna, Aetna, WellPoint, HealthSpring, etc.).

It is more profitable to brew beer than to provide health care.

Actually to operate a brewery is the most profitable business ever 25% profit margin!!! Dang!

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FACT CHECK: Health insurer profits not so fat

By CALVIN WOODWARD

Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Insurers are an expedient target for leaders who want a government-run plan in the marketplace. Such a public option would force private insurers to trim profits and restrain premiums to compete, the argument goes. This would "keep insurance companies honest," says President Barack Obama.

The debate is loaded with intimations that insurers are less than straight, when they are not flatly accused of malfeasance.

They may not have helped their case by commissioning a report that looked primarily at the elements of health care legislation that might drive consumer costs up while ignoring elements aimed at bringing costs down. Few in the debate seem interested in a true balance sheet.

But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. A look at some claims, and the numbers:

THE CLAIMS

_"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.

THE NUMBERS:

Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries. As is typical, other health sectors did much better - drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10.

The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent.

HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That's a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers.

The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin.

UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue.

Van Hollen is right that premiums have more than doubled in a decade, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found a 131 percent increase.

But were the Bush years golden ones for health insurers?

Not judging by profit margins, profit growth or returns to shareholders. The industry's overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never cracked 8 percent.

The latest annual profit margins of a selection of products, services and industries: Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent; Yahoo, 5.9 percent; Hershey, 6.1 percent; Clorox, 8.7 percent; Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent; construction and farm machinery, 5 percent; Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent.

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I Am An Idiot Because ...

By: J.J. Jackson

Ok, I am going to have some fun this week. 

To accomplish this fun I am going to list for you, my readers, many of the reasons liberals think that I am an idiot. 

The way this is going to work is simple.  I am just going to go through my email from the last week and pick out correspondence from liberals telling me that I am an idiot for [insert reason here].  Only when someone used the actual term “idiot” to describe me will their comment be included in this list but, due to time and space limitations, not all such utterances will be included. 

In the end, I think we will have a good picture of what the left sees as qualifying one as being an idiot.

So let us begin.  What follows are the actual comments of actual liberals.  I am an idiot, according to liberals, because:

“ ... [I] actually think that the average person is smart enough to control their own lives!  Wake up!  People are dumb!”

“ ... [I] want everyone to embrace capitalism ...”

“ ... [I think] that people should be able to keep the money they earn!  No one earns any money!  Any money ‘earned’ is just money stolen from someone else!”

“ ... [I think] that hard work is actually rewarded by those greedy SOBs on Wall Street!!!!!!!”

“ ... [I] foolishly believe that there is actually some superiority to voluntarily giving money to charity compared to giving it to government to help the poor.”

“ ... [I] don’t accept that President Obama is clearly the greatests (sic) President living or dead to ever lead this lost country called America back to greatness.”

“ ... [all I] have done is trash ACORN when without them no African Americans would have the right to vote!”

“ ... [I] don’t understand how great health care is in countries like Cuba!  Instead [I am] too busy pushing [my] capitalist and anti-American agenda!”

“ ... [I] refuse to accept how utterly right wing Adolf Hilter and his band of national socailists (sic) were!” (emphasis mine)

“ ... [I] support the bloodsucking and evil Jews in theri (sic) conquest to take over the world and enslave all perpsons (sic) of color.”

“ ... [I] do not believe that people should have a right to other people’s wealth in order to better their own lives and pay for their right to health ccare (sic) which has only been stripped by the greedy who run this nation.”

“ ... [I] actually quote the Constitutioon (sic) as IF THAT REALLY MEANS ANYTHING SINCE IT WAS WRITTEN BY EVIL WHITE SLAVEHOLDERS AND IS NOTHING BYT (sic) LIES!”

“ ... [I] cannot begin to understand how rought (sic) it is to be poor in America!  It is WORSE than being poor in AFRICA by any means of measure!”

“ ... [I] stand up against pedophilia when there is absolutely nothing wrong with an adult having sex with underage and teenage children!  EVERYONE WHO HAS READ THE RESEARCH KNOWS THAT ADULT-CHILD SEX IS BENEFICIAL TO HTE (sic) CHILD!”

“ ... [I] believe that the war on terror is something other than what it is which is a war for oil and to conquer the brown man!”

“ ... [I] refuse to except the clear and dominant evidence the 9/11 was in fact an inside job perpetrated by the Bush Administration to rally America into a war of oppression in the Middle East.”

“ ... [I] continue to spread the lie that the Democrats are the majority in both houses of Congress when [I] know damn well that the Republicans hold both houses and have been filibustering everying (sic) President obamma (sic) has tried to do to make America great again.”

“ ... [I] keep spreading the conservative media’s lies about Hugo Chavez and ignoring what good he is accomplishing in Venezuela by throwing his political opposition in jail to keep them from hindering his progress and returning the ill gotten gains of the greedy to the people.”

“ ... [I am] so ardent a believer that citizens have a ‘right’ to defend themselves against criminals and even those criminals perpetrating assualt (sic) on them and even suggest that it ok to ‘murder’ those criminals to stop them when everyone with a brain knows that it is a blatant disregard for the human rights of the criminal to allow such hideous acts.”

So basically I am an idiot because I believe in liberty, free markets, the right to self-defense, the repulsiveness of child molestation, promote the truth that Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House, dislike left wing thugs and tyrants, tell the truth about their governments, read and quote the Constitution, think people are smart enough to make their own decisions, believe that people should be able to work hard and keep the fruits of that labor without forced confiscation for government social programs, support fighting miscreants stuck in the 15th Century, don’t think that Jews are the most evil force on the planet, disagree with President Obama, discuss corruption by groups that just happen to be associated with the President, and do not accept the premise that the United States is inherently evil because at one time in the past parts of the country engaged in the horrific and unconscionable act of race-based slavery?

I just want to make sure that we are clear as to why it is me, and not you folks, that are the “idiots.”

=====================================

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the lead editor contributor to American Conservative Daily.  He is the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com

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Foxophobia, Triskaidekaphobia - Fickle Phantasms from the White House?

By Michael Bresciani

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13, and while it may seem silly to some then we discover friggatriskaidekaphobia which is fear of Friday the 13th. Superstitious, silly perhaps, but some people are stricken with real trepidation over them both. Here comes Foxophobia, what is a nation to do?

President Obama’s persistence in singling Fox News out for scoffing and scolding has generated more disbelief than relief for most Americans. It is hard for anyone to imagine a President using the advantage of the office of the President to single out any one individual, corporation, state or even other nations who were not known to be our mortal enemies. It is unprecedented but it is also un-presidential according to anyone’s assessment of protocol.

The diagnosis modern psychiatry has used to explain phobias in general is that they are repressed anger. Some would say that the President is not fearful of Fox but he is angry with them for doggedly opposing almost all of his policies. To the rest of America the question is silly. We don’t care which came first, the chicken or the egg, we do care that the President seems to be whining.

We know the brave young soldiers overwhelmed by insurgents in Afghanistan are very angry with the enemy that wants to kill them. Do they have a phobia that needs diagnosis? You could say they fear that they will be killed while the President dilly dallies with Fox and leaves them in the lurch without reinforcements. Is it unreasonable to think that Obama’s anger at Fox is misdirected even as our troops have the anger of a vicious enemy directed squarely at them?

At the moment freedom of speech is still constitutional and the President will have to suffer the consequences of that. Fox still has a constitutional right to investigate and report what they find to the public. He doesn’t have to like it but we can give him the same advice the networks give us when we complain about the trash they offer for programming and the mire and muck we are afraid our kids might see: shut it off!

Most Americans cringe when their freedom of speech is questioned, curtailed or outright denied because it is the only way to get to the truth of a matter. If we are all required to speak only the ‘party line’ then we might want to stop calling it ‘the main stream media’ or even the ‘old media’ as some are now saying and rename it Pravda. Didn’t that already fail?

It is because of freedom of speech that we now know what Acorn has been doing with taxpayer’s money. It is the means by which we see that Obama’s unconstitutionally appointed czars have ideas and plans for America that read like the dark passages of Sartre. It is the reason we are given a chance to compare the findings of the budget office against the absurd projections of the Obama administration on the cost of health care. It is the reason that news organizations like Fox will always be listened to, loved and depended upon to break out the other side of the story. Fox is clearly the offspring of the constitution not an unwanted stepchild of the present administration and those who love the truth will never see it any other way.

Dare we say ‘grow up Mr. President?’ Yes we dare and in fact it may be long overdue. We tend not to trust the media that say Palin is a loop de-loop but are delighted with Michelle’s use of the Hula Hoop. We don’t think the regulatory czar’s idea of abolishing marriage is a reasonable answer to the question of protecting the sanctity of marriage and we don’t mind one bit that news outlets like Fox are warning us that your czar’s have these kinds of ideas. We welcome it.

We weren’t always labeled as republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives we were once referred to only as Americans. We suspect that when our constitution was framed that was foremost in the minds of the framers.

We believed this through two centuries of history, two major wars and countless fears and calamities and we still believe it today. We welcome Fox into our homes daily because they remind us of this, we are Americans not socialists, health care reform rebels or Obama policy haters; we are still only Americans. We are no more ashamed of that than we are of Fox news and we are saddened to hear that you are.

http://www.americanprophet.org is the place for news, articles, movie and book reviews and other insights for life. Rev Bresciani is a columnist for online and print publications and has over three million readers and counting.

Keywords:

Fox,Fox News, Obama, regulatory czar,czars,Palin,Michelle,hula hoop,triskaidekaphobia,friggatriskaidekaphobia,Foxophobia,psychiatry,Afghanistan,constitution,freedom of speech,Pravda,Friday 13th,president,fearful,Sartre

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Socializing Society By Eliminating The Family

By Thomas E. Brewton

Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, proposes to abolish traditional marriage as a state-sponsored institution.

As many feared, same-sex marriage may become the wedge to destroy the religious and political institutions of marriage and family.

Each new day brings to light additions to the torrent of liberal-progressive-socialist attacks upon the basic social and political institutions of Western civilization and its foundation in Judeo-Christian morality.  Reducing marriage to no more than issuance of a civil certificate acknowledging the partnering of any two people is exactly what the Soviet Union did.  The aim was, and is under Obama’s New New Deal socialism, to break down lingering vestiges of individual moral responsibility and to supplant them with servility under the supposedly classless socialist political state.

Sunstein’s proposal to degrade marriage to a civil license to any two people desiring to become partners is in direct opposition to a principal reason for the state’s sanctioning marriage. 

Historically the state was concerned primarily with the welfare of children born from a marriage.  Fathers, as well as mothers, were to have responsibility for the welfare and acculturation of their children.  The plague of illegitimate births and single-parent families is only a foretaste of what is to come if marriage is abolished as a state-sanctioned institution that gives legal rights to children and parents.  The dissolution of marriage is inseparably connected to rampant drug abuse and violent crime to which single-parent children all too frequently fall victim.

Note that sexual promiscuity was made a social norm in the 1960s and 70s by liberal-progressive-socialists like the violent and criminal Weatherman underground.  That organization was led by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, President Obama’s close Chicago friends, supporters, and advisors.  Professor Sunstein is merely following in the tracks of Weatherman, which counseled members to arm themselves, bring the Vietnam War home, and bomb police stations, banks, and military installations, while “icing” a few police (aka pigs).

Breaking up the family as the primary social and educational element of society also opens the way for the political state to push parents aside and proselytize young children for the secular religion of socialism.  This was the intention of the Hitler Youth organization, which was to bypass traditional religion in the home and teach young people to betray parents who were not fully supportive of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) program.

In a larger context, no political state can endure without stable families,which both produce the children necessary to perpetuate the body politic, and serve as the primary educational institution for all citizens.  It was in the home that children traditionally learned the principles of fair play, courtesy and respect for their elders and playmates, and the traditions and customs that foster patriotism and make each political society a distinct and enduring body.

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Does this call for a national emergency?

By Alain

Wow. National Emergency. Special Government Powers enabled.

Obama declares swine flu a national emergency Swine flu emergency! What does that mean?

For the FLU?

I mean really, lets look at a simple statistical comparison here...

SWINE FLU (aka H1N1)

Health authorities say more than 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children, have died from the strain of flu known as H1N1, and 46 states have widespread flu activity. (More Here)

Ok, now lets look at a bigger killer that currently ALSO bears the label "pandemic"...

HIV AND AIDS (Just in the USA)

• Number of people living with HIV: 1 200 000 [690 000 - 1 900 000]
• Adults aged 15 to 49 prevalence rate: 0.6% [0.4% - 1%]
• Adults aged 15 and up living with HIV: 1 100 000 [690 000 - 1 900 000]
• Women aged 15 and up living with HIV: 230 000 [140 000 - 400 000]
• Children aged 0 to 14 living with HIV: N/A
• Deaths due to AIDS: 22 000 [9 000 - 54 000]
• Orphans due to AIDS aged 0 to 17: N/A

Source: Epidemiological Fact Sheet on HIV and AIDS, 2008

I don't hear anything about needing a NATIONAL EMERGENCY for AIDS? even though it is by FAR a greater threat, a larger killer, than this FLU...

Or maybe, Next month he will expand his National Emergency to cover AIDS also, or who knows, maybe the common cold?

Lets hear what you think about this?

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Swine flu emergency! What does that mean?

Is president's proclamation formality, or institution of Obama martial law?

By Drew Zahn

Obama declares swine flu a national emergency Does this call for a national emergency?

President Obama announced today that he has declared a "national emergency" over the H1N1 virus, a phrase with an ominous sound, but with little explanation offered by most of the news media.

The Associated Press, for example, merely stated that the declaration removes "bureaucratic roadblocks" and enables officials to "bypass federal rules." Other news outlets were even vaguer, saying the declaration waived federal requirements, but not saying what those requirements govern.

In the void of information, Internet rumors were quick to flame, centering on concerns over how the Obama administration might use the declared emergency to suddenly expand government power.

"Obama just declared H1N1 a national emergency," wrote a reader in an e-mail, "Here we go with martial law."

An article by Kurt Nimmo of InfoWars took the worry a step further, wondering if the White House's declaration engaged certain measures of the National Emergencies Act:

"In the weeks ahead," Nimmo writes, "we may witness a move toward martial law, forced vaccination and internment of those who refuse."

But even if there really is a plot to manipulate the H1N1 virus scare into enforcing a sweeping expansion of federal power, today's "national emergency" falls far short of martial law.

In fact, the laws enacted by the president's proclamation do little more than clear administrative hurdles for quicker processing of Medicare payments, and the very provisions of the National Emergencies Act that the president cited in his proclamation actually limit the power his administration can take.

The proclamation signed by the president states:

I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act … do hereby find and proclaim that, given that the rapid increase in illness across the nation may overburden health care resources and that the temporary waiver of certain standard federal requirements may be warranted in order to enable U.S. health care facilities to implement emergency operations plans, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in the United States constitutes a national emergency.

Section 201 of the National Emergencies Act, however, simply requires the president to inform Congress in writing when a national emergency is declared – which he did today, after signing the declaration last night.

Section 301 forbids the president from taking up any powers of the National Emergencies Act save those he lists in the proclamation of emergency, requiring him to "specify the provisions of law under which he proposes that he, or other officers will act."

And what powers did Obama specify?

"I hereby declare," the proclamation states, "that the secretary [of Health and Human Services] may exercise the authority under section 1135 of the [Social Security Act]."

Section 1135, in turn, allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, to review on a case-by-case basis applications from health care providers who wish certain restrictions be waived.

According to an explanation prepared by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, those restrictions that can be waived include:

• Certification requirements for some doctors to be paid by Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP programs


• Pre-approval requirements for some services


• Requirements that doctors be licensed in the same state they're practicing in order to get federal payments


• Sanctions against moving patients to alternate facilities


• A handful of other requirements governing how medical providers are paid.

In fact, the most ominous provision of a Section 1135 waiver may be alterations to HIPAA privacy regulations.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services explains that under a declared emergency, facilities granted a Section 1135 waiver no longer need to obtain a patient's agreement to speak with family members or friends involved in the patient's care, no longer need to distribute a notice of their privacy practices and no longer need to honor the patient's right to request privacy restrictions or confidential communications.

"For example," an HHS document on HIPAA explains, "an individual may request that her health care provider call her at her office, rather than her home. A health care provider must accommodate an individual's reasonable request for such confidential communications."

With a Section 1135 waiver granted by the CMS in a declared emergency, however, the provider need not accommodate the request in the example of calling the patient at her office.

President Obama justified the national emergency proclamation with the following words:

By rapidly identifying the virus, implementing public health measures, providing guidance for health professionals and the general public, and developing an effective vaccine, we have taken proactive steps to reduce the impact of the pandemic and protect the health of our citizens. As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic.

Nevertheless, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic continues to evolve. The rates of illness continue to rise rapidly within many communities across the nation, and the potential exists for the pandemic to overburden health care resources in some localities.

Thus, in recognition of the continuing progression of the pandemic, and in further preparation as a nation, we are taking additional steps to facilitate our response.

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Obama declares swine flu a national emergency

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

Does this call for a national emergency? Swine flu emergency! What does that mean?

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients.

The declaration, signed Friday night and announced Saturday, comes with the disease more prevalent than ever in the country and production delays undercutting the government's initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million doses of the vaccine could be available by mid-October.

Health authorities say more than 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children, have died from the strain of flu known as H1N1, and 46 states have widespread flu activity. So far only 11 million doses have gone out to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials.

Administration officials said the declaration was a pre-emptive move designed to make decisions easier when they need to be made. Officials said the move was not in response to any single development.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius now has authority to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers if hospitals seek permission.

Some hospitals have opened drive-thrus and drive-up tent clinics to screen and treat swine flu patients. The idea is to keep infectious people out of regular emergency rooms and away from other sick patients.

Hospitals could modify patient rules — for example, requiring them to give less information during a hectic time — to quicken access to treatment, with government approval, under the declaration.

It also addresses a financial question for hospitals — reimbursement for treating people at sites not typically approved. For instance, federal rules do not allow hospitals to put up treatment tents more than 250 yards away from the doors; if the tents are 300 yards or more away, typically federal dollars won't go to pay for treatment.

Administration officials said those rules might not make sense while fighting the swine flu, especially if the best piece of pavement is in the middle of a parking lot and some medical centers already are putting in place parts of their emergency plans.

The national emergency declaration was the second of two steps needed to give Sebelius extraordinary powers during a crisis.

On April 26, the administration declared swine flu a public health emergency, allowing the shipment of roughly 12 million doses of flu-fighting medications from a federal stockpile to states in case they eventually needed them. At the time, there were 20 confirmed cases in the U.S. of people recovering easily. There was no vaccine against swine flu, but the CDC had taken the initial step necessary for producing one.

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in Saturday's declaration.

He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."

The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December. The flu virus has to be grown in chicken eggs, and the yield hasn't been as high as was initially hoped, officials have said.

"Many millions" of Americans have had swine flu so far, according to an estimate that CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden gave Friday. The government doesn't test everyone to confirm swine flu so it doesn't have an exact count. He also said there have been more than 20,000 hospitalizations.

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