When Obama and the rest of the Leftists predicated the bulk of their argument for quasi-nationalizing (as a start) the health insurance industry on a false premise and willfully kept repeating these outright falsehoods, it’s not “non-symmetric sensitivity;” It’s lying, and no amount of Orwellian TrueSpeak can change that.

Firstly, my apologies for the delay in your comment being posted; the number of links in it set off my spam filter and I didn’t notice things right away.

Secondly, my apologies for the further delay in responding to the comment. I’m afraid that I’ve suffered from an attack of life over the last few days.

Anyway…

I can certainly understand your anger at the health insurance companies. You’ve bought the line that the Liberals have been selling you. But then there is the factual data from the AMA itself on the rates of claims denials and the listed reasons for them.

According to the AMA, CIGNA only denied 3.44% of claims, whereas Medicare – a government solution – denied 6.85%, a higher percentage of claims than were denied by any of the ranked private insurers.

Appears to me, insurance for accident and health, and the people who actually look after patients are on the bottom of you scale.

Your conclusions appear to be correct.

My insurance company is CIGNA … often cited as the most vile insurance company for people dying on their watch, and what not. Last year their revenue was $4.4 Billion with profits roughly $220 Million, about 5% which is close to what your table shows. Now, if we take into account bonuses, perks and the like, these profits would be substantially higher, but lets keep focused on the books.

My argument is that these profits are MORE than sufficient to actually cure people of their ailments, but they refuse. Just look at Nataline Sarkisyan, her procedure would have cost pennies for them, but she was denied treatment and died at the ripe age of 17. There are countless situations like this, and what bothers me most is that the insurance companies aren’t liable for the deaths they cause. This, in my opinion, is what is obscene about their profits.

While a government solution may not be the ideal option, it can’t possibly be worse than what we have now. I have been repeating this often over the past few months … why not run a poll in any western European country asking its citizens if they would give up their current ‘free’ healthcare for the US system … if you get a 25% response in favor of the US system I would be surprised.

Are some the CEO’s overpaid? Seems like it to me, but it largely immaterial to the issue at hand – unless you’re issue is a hatred of the wealthy.

$124.8 million total compensation of United Health Group (parent of United Healthcare) CEO William McGuire.

Howard Phanstiel, PacifiCare, 3.38 million; Edward Hanway, Cigna, $13.3 million; John Rowe, Aetna, $22.2 million; and Larry Glassrock, Wellpoint, $25.0 million.

McGuire’s compensation was so large as to take a measurable part of this large company’s net income (5%). Or to look at it from a stock-holder’s (and hence, an company owner’s) viewpoint, had McGuire, who is an employee, been only paid a cool million, and this money had been distributed as a dividend, it would amount to about a $0.20 per share dividend. (The current dividend is $0.03 per share.)

To look at it from a United employee’s viewpoint, had McGuire, who is an employee, been only paid a cool million, and this money had been distributed to employees, each of the 40,000 employees could have received a bonus larger than $3000.

To look at it from the viewpoint of the health care system, the $124.8 million total compensation of a single United employee could pay the salaries of 833 general internists at current typical salaries. Or the $124.8 million could run one reasonable size community hospital for a year.

That’s obscene.