Where The Voters Really Stand On Health Care

[NHartphotog]

Originally Posted by Roadking2003

Greedy insurance industry???? How about 3.3% profit?

If you've ever run a business, you'd know that the publicized profit margin is NOT an indicator of how much money a company makes and spends on things like Taj Mahal office buildings, "investments," CEO and Executives direct compensation (plus paying for every bit of their luxury lifestyles), etc. How much can a company spend on maintaining the CEO's all-expense-paid lifestyle? Probably more than I can imagine, but I do know the CEO of my spouse's employer comes to work (when he "works," once every 2 or 3 weeks) in a brand-new, super luxury private helicopter. All of those expenses, while not benefitting the premium payer one bit, remove income from being labeled "profit."

In comparison to other CEOs, how greedy are Health Insurance CEOs? In direct compensation, "Executives in the health care industry led the way, with average compensation of $12.45 million, followed by technology CEOs at $8.83 million, those in consumer goods at $8.73 million, in oil and gas at $8.17 million and financial firm executives at $7.60 million." Wall Street Journal report: US executive perks “flourished” in 2008

To talk numbers, let's just look at direct compensation for a single Health Insurance CEO in 2008 (since more recent numbers have been fudged even more in response to a news story in early 2009 caused public outrage): "Aetna’s Ronald Williams received $24,300,112 last year. That’s $467,309.85 per week. That’s a house. Maybe not a house that Mr. Williams would live in, but a house nonetheless. The man makes a house a week. And interestingly enough, if Mr. Williams were to eschew the purchase of a house on any given week and instead look to deposit the money in a bank– in order to remain FDIC insured (up to $250,000)– he would actually need to open more than one account–every week." Health Insurance Company CEOs Total Compensation in 2008 : HEALTH REFORM WATCH

And though details of Health Insurance Industry CEO's perks are hard to find, here's the cost of another CEO perk to help quantify numbers: "Dana Holding Corp., the Toledo, Ohio-based auto parts maker, spent $2.3 million last year on chartered planes "to fly its chairman and chief executive, John M. Devine, and its vice chairman and former CEO, Gary L. Convis, to and from their California homes." Dana, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2008, recently announced a plan to eliminate 5,800 jobs by the end of 2009." Wall Street Journal report: US executive perks “flourished” in 2008

One of my close relatives worked in the accounting department of a mid-sized health insurance company in our area. According to her, the amount of money that was spent by the company on CEO and other top executives was "staggering, sickening, and outrageous."

Publicized profit is what the company chooses as a small number to satisfy investors and keep the tax man happy.

[Katarina Witt]

^^Great post!

Please also see this article:

Reforming American health care: Heading for the emergency room | The Economist

This is my favorite quote:

Jonathan Skinner, an economist at Dartmouth College, cautions that factors other than health-care systems—attitudes to teenage pregnancy, say, or smoking—may influence the numbers. Even so, he thinks the system is wasteful. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives last year he and Alan Garber, of Stanford University, argued that America’s health system was “uniquely inefficient”, producing too little per unit of input and consuming far too much of the country’s resources.

I don't think there is a person who works in health care who would disagree with that. It's just inefficient! And all those inefficiencies are not reflected in "profit", they are reflected in expenses.

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by NHartphotog

If you've ever run a business, you'd know that the publicized profit margin is NOT an indicator of how much money a company makes and spends on things like Taj Mahal office buildings, "investments," CEO and Executives direct compensation (plus paying for every bit of their luxury lifestyles), etc.

Publicized profit is what the company chooses as a small number to satisfy investors and keep the tax man happy.

I have a lot of experience in this area and know exactly how companies compute earnings. Health insurance companies are no different that other companies. They all reward executives quite well.

But, they don't "choose a small number" for profits. There are accounting rules that must be applied.

So, at the end of the day, Health Insurance company profits are at the bottom of the barrel. Not exactly "greedy".

[DFWMike]

Originally Posted by Roadking2003

The facts are that the genetics of certain people produce longer lives and the genetics of others produce shorter lives.

WoW, how do you argue with someone who still believes this, do you think they're brains are still smaller too? Geez....just sad.

I do agree with you on one thing, the insurance companies aren't necessarily the great evil here, it's the corporations that hire them. In most cases the insurance companies are just a pawn of what the company that hires them tells them to do, the big companies are just able to hide behind the middle man and blame insurance for their own cost cutting measures.

I saw the post where you aren't a republican, then what are you, a tea partier? Worse than republicans by the way, the ones spearheading no consensus in Washington. Really mad people who have no solutions to the things they're mad about.