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Remember when gasoline was around $4 a
gallon? Politicians wasted no time in
rounding up oil company executives and
bringing them before congressional
committees to browbeat them, accuse
them of greed and make sure the
honorable members of congress were seen
scowling into TV cameras for the folks
back home.
They cited dollar amounts that EXXON
raked in, neglecting to mention that
these figures were gross income before
expenses and federal taxes. The oil
company execs didn’t set the price of
oil--that was done on Wall Street and
other world money markets by
speculators. When the prices went down,
the politicians didn’t round up the
executives and publically pat them on
the back. The truth of the matter is
that EXXON paid the federal government
in taxes more than they made in net
profits.
In
trying to get his ObamaCare takeover
travesty passed through congress, the
president has been using the same
tactic. He has been demonizing the
health insurance companies, accusing
them of denying peoples’ claims and
raking in billions in excess profits.
Here’s some interesting information
about health insurers that the president
is omitting from his attack on the
insurance industry that I found a few
days ago on Facebook, written by author,
freelance writer and not so little
brother, Phillip J. Hubbell:
“According to the most recent Fortune
500 rankings, health insurers are not
even among the top-30 United States
industries in profit-margin. Health
insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin
of just 2.2 percent -- less than
one-fifth the profit-margin of
railroads. None of the ten largest
American health insurers made profits of
more than 4.5 percent, and two of them
lost money. Health insurers' collective
profit-margin is less than one-eighth
that of drug companies and less than
one-seventh that of companies that sell
medical products or equipment. It's also
less than that of medical facilities.
Yet when was the last time you heard
President Obama rail against greedy
hospitals?
The combined profits of America's ten
largest health insurers are $8.3
billion. That's less than two-thirds of
the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than
half of the profits of General Electric
alone, and less than one-seventh of what
Medicare loses each year to fraud.
Health insurers collectively have
one-eighth the profit-margin of
McDonald's or Coke, one-ninth that of
eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck.
The Healthcare debate
continues to grow as Obama demonizes
those evil profit-making insurance
companies--meanwhile Nancy Pelosi says,
‘But we have to pass the bill so that
you can find out what is in it, away
from the fog of the controversy.’"
The Obama
alternative to those “greedy” insurance
companies is the federal government. We
are to believe that the owners of the
post office, Medicare and the IRS can
create a health care monopoly that is
cheaper and more efficient than the
private sector.
Anytime the
government gets involved in anything,
the costs always skyrocket. Back in 1970
the government forecast the cost of the
hospital portion of Medicare would be
$2.9 billion per year. The actual cost
was $5.3 million. The same estimate in
1980 was $5.5 billion while the actual
cost was $25.6 billion. To pay for it,
the government created 23 new taxes in
the first 30 years of Medicare. From
this information, I am confident that if
Obama can get this bill passed, the cost
“savings” that he touts will disappear
and in its place, huge tax increases
will be substituted. I think he wants
this as his legacy, no matter how bad it
is, no matter what it costs, and no
matter if it costs him his job and the
jobs of Democrats in congress that voted
for it. He believes in socialized
medicine and it doesn’t bother him that
an overwhelming number of Americans hate
the idea and don’t want the federal
government intruding into their personal
affairs. He thinks he knows better than
everyone else. He also knows that once a
large number of people—his people, start
getting free medical care, congress will
not have the political will to repeal
it. Our only hope is to stop it now. |
