Health Insurance profits - not QUITE what the Dems are saying! - Granite Grok

Health Insurance profits – not QUITE what the Dems are saying!

A condensation I found at Townhall confirms what I’ve said before – the Democrats (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, et al) distort the numbers because they know that most Americans can’t tell you the difference between profits and profit margins.  They have distorted the profits of the energy companies to push their agenda of forcing Americans to pay higher energy costs to fit their agenda of Cap and Trade – they do it again in this misguided attempt to centralize healthcare provisioning in a power grab by an overbearing Federal Government:

Pelosi: "I’m very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers’ "obscene profits."

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen: "Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed." , member of the Democratic leadership.

MoveOn.org: "Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe." A  ad.

 

Demonize, demonize, demonize – yet, they ignore that it is ordinary citizens that work at these companies and it is ordinary citizens that own these companies via outright ownership of shares, shares via 401(k) accounts, and the like.

They continue to make the word "profit" to be derogatory as the Democrats continue their march to delegitimize the capitalistic system. Which, I remind you, in its very basis, is the voluntary purchase by a buyer of a good or service by a seller (as opposed to the mandatory individual healthcare mandate these Statists wish to foist upon us all).

So, where do the profit margins actually lay?

  • Network and other communications equipment – 20.4 percent.
  • Railroads – 12.6 percent profit margin.
  • Clorox – 8.7 percent
  • Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) – 8.5 percent.
  • Molson Coors Brewing – 8.1 percent
  • Tupperware Brands – 7.5 percent
  • Hershey – 6.1 percent
  • Yahoo – 5.9 percent
  • construction and farm machinery – 5 percent;
  • Jack in the Box restaurants – 4 percent margin.
  • Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries (usual is 6%).

Immoral?  Obscene?  Safe?

This is not about profit or profit margins – rather, it IS about control (and making up the arguments to get it).

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