No, I Did Not

In an earlier post I talked about United Health Care making 5% profit margin, and claimed that such a profit was not excessive. That produced a small number of charges to the effect that I was defending the insurance companies, which is not entirely true. I am aware that in order to achieve their profits, reasonable or otherwise, many insurance companies employ a number of scurrilous practices such as declining to pay claims, dropping people who become ill, refusing to insure people with previous medical histories, and others.

I most certainly did not intend to defend those practices.

My point is that they do not engage in these practices for the fun of it, they do it to reduce costs. If they are required to knock it off, which they should be, their costs are going to go up and their profits will decline. If we require them to do enough more paying out and at the same time drive premiums down, their profits will disappear altogether. If insurance companies do not make profits they will cease doing business.

If that happens, you and I will not have health insurance.

I’m totally in favor of health care reform or, if we can’t have that, of health insurance reform. If we can’t have good reform, them let’s have crappy reform. Just pass the best thing that we can pass and let’s get on with making this thing as much better as we can make it, however little that might be.

Just don’t pee in my ear and try to convince me that it’s raining.