Who Is Making the Biggest Profits From Health Care?
"Over the past year, “the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent,” Newman points out, quoting data provided by Morningstar, a company that rates mutual funds. Morningstar would have no reason to low-ball the insurance industry’s profits; its readers are looking for highly profitable sectors of the economy where they can invest. But the health plan industry is not one of those sectors: insurers ranks 87th out of 215 industries."
"“Among the large, for-profit health insurers” Newman adds, “profit margins line up with the industry as a whole. UnitedHealthGroup, the biggest health insurer, had a 4.1 percent profit margin over the past 12 months. WellPoint, the next biggest, had a 4 percent profit margin. Aetna, Cigna, and Humana came in below that.”
"But this isn’t to suggest that no one in our for-profit health care industry is making money. “Pharmaceutical companies have a profit margin of 16.4 percent,” Newman reports, “seventh highest of the 215 industries that Morningstar tracks.” "
Saturday, September 26, 2009
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4 comments:
If the executives at these health insurance companies would stop buying corporate jets, and gold plated dish ware on those corporate jets and stop giving themselves hundred million dollar salaries, then the investor might make a little more profit, my guess is there are too many small investors and not enough big investors, small investors have no say in how a company spends its money, when there are too many small investors the executives suck out the maximum amount they can for their perks and salaries, only when they know they can be fired by one or several big investors are they kept in check. As a small investor I would much rather invest in pharmaceuticals than in insurance, yet as a corporate executive I'd much rather work for an insurance company. As a consumer I would like to see the insurance companies go bankrupt and let the Govt. take care of insurance like they do with Medicare or like they do in Germany, France, Canada, the UK, Denmark, Norway and 32 other countries that have better health care than we do.
Why don't you do some research, find out how much the executives made, add in all the perks, and figure out what the profit margin would have been. I'll bet you will be surprised how little a difference it makes.
I did the research and all the profits except 4% (which goes to investors apparently not bad in crisis times really) all the rest goes to executive perks, salaries, company parties, brainwashing the public with hundreds of millions in advertising and financing so called think tanks, bribing politicians, bribing doctors, buying hospitals, etc...I don't see premiums going down or more and better coverage for more higher risk people. Why the investors put up with this, I don't get it unless they think long term they can raise the premiums further or refuse more coverage to riskier clients in order to raise profits further. I really don't see what value added of private insurance to bringing down health care costs when govt. can do it better and cheaper?
I doubt you did any research. I don't think there are any line items for bribing.
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