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You're right and you're wrong

Once again there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Health insurer profits may indeed have risen 428% from 2000 to 2007, but their profit MARGINS have not.  Most insurers today are still making the same margin that they did 10 years ago -- 5 percent in a good year.  For comparison's sake, your average restaurant makes 10 percent, your average media company makes 18 percent.

Insurers are merely a pass-through, and when you focus on them, you are taking your eye off the ball.

The reason insurer net earnings have increased so wildly is that medical costs -- the money we pay for procedures, treatments, therapies and drugs -- has grown so wildly.

Simply put, those doctors and hospitals that we feel so warm and fuzzy about are doing more to us and on us, charging more and more for it, and there's increasing evidence that shows a lot of it does us no good, and in some cases actually causes us more harm.

The cost problem lies with health CARE, not health insurance, or medical financing, or whatever you want to call it.

Think of it this way.  If you go get a car loan with a 2% interest rate, you'd think you got a good deal on the financing, right?  But if you could only afford $300 a month payments, and the car you want would cost you $400 a month, where does the problem lie?  Is it those bastards at the bank?  Or are you just plain paying too much for the car?

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by: gas28man @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 09:01:54 AM CDT