FACT CHECK: Health Insurers' Profits Not So Fat

FOXNEWS.com ^ | 10/26/09 | AP

[your local physicist]

WASHINGTON -- 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."

But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. 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.

[your local physicist]

As usual, Pelosi and the democrat moonbat base have no idea what they're talking about. The huge problem we face is not honest profits made by insurance companies, but the soaring cost of the government-run medicare and medicaid programs.

[your local physicist]

...and the soaring cost of the government-run prescription drug discount program. That program really should be handled like a defense contracting program where the government buys the prescription drugs at about 10% above the full cost of production and then resells the drugs to seniors. I would agree that drug companies are making too much profit off that program.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Facts don’t matter to these liberals. And that’s a sad fact. They don’t want to do any detailed analysis of health care costs or insurance company profits. They want to demagogue the issue, and they need a villian to do it.

Obama needs villians to operate. Rush Limbaugh is a villian, Fox News is a villian, white cops who act stupidly are villians, insurance companies are villians.

[GauchoUSA]

It’s true just because they say it’s true. Insurance companies are evil and that is that.

[SunkenCiv]

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.

It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care. They lie!

[deaconjim]

If you do a little research, you will find that the health insurance industry is nowhere near the top of the list when it comes to profit margins. One notable industry that beats out the health insurance industry is the entertainment industry.