Obviously, this is true.

But in a truly free market, there is a check on admin costs and salaries getting out of hand. It’s called competition.

Unfortunately, the health insurance market isn’t really free. It is controlled in many ways by the criminals in congress.

Two of the main ways that happens is by blocking inter-state competition (which seems unconstitutional to me). Move across the border fron New York to Pennsylvania, and watch your health insurance premiums decline by nearly 50%. The other way is by mandating that the insurers cover obscure conditions that the legislators enforce to buy votes in their districts.

Remove the restraints on free trade, and costs will decline dramatically.

Note: this happens in every industry. For example, the two primary drivers of the Real Estate bubble were “Loans for Deadbeats” and the building restrictions in states like California and New York (which restrain free trade and drive up the cost of a house by more than 100%). Both of course are Libwit policies that 1. buy votes for the Libwit politicians and 2. insure that the Libwit’s homes are overinflated.

Some other thoughts that have come to me are: 1) If we like them or not .. the insurers (they aren’t knights on a white horse maybe, but they ain’t Satan either) .. when they pay our claims, they’re great! When they collect our premiums it’s too much and a bad thing. 2) Those big bad insurance companies pay huge dollars in taxes that won’t continue to be there as we ruin that industry, too. And 3) Insurance companies don’t survive off of premium dollars alone. They invest big time in big dollar stuff. Who’s going to stoke those economic engines when we ruin that industry?

Just some random thoughts and ponderings. Sorry to ramble.

Another ramble .. weren’t we told, too, that the car companies were rollin’ in the dough (obscene profits – during their history). The oil companies. The hospitals and doctors. Etc, etc …

Everybody’s just rippin’ everybody off .. EXCEPT FOR, of course .. your good ol’ politicians and the gubamint. Right???

End of rambling. God bless, all!

Low profits can be a result of high administration costs. You know, CEO salaries.

I bless you in the name of Christ. .

New York Times: By PETER BAKER Published: April 30, 2009
WASHINGTON —

As Mr. Obama recounted the story, his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, decided to have the surgery, but then, two weeks after the operation, everything went downhill.

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Mr. Obama said

he went on to say: “If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life, that would be pretty upsetting.”

..On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your qualify of life will be terrible.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05.....baker.html

The Washington Post Barack Obama Arrives in Hawaii Oct 24 2008
Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) walks off the plane after landing in Honolulu, Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother. (Hugh Gentry/Reuters)
By Robert Barnes HONOLULU –

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived here today to attend to his gravely ill grandmother… touched down here early Friday

He went straight from the airport to the modest, downtown apartment of the woman he calls Toot.. grandparent. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, has been caring for their Kansas-born grandmother and alerted Obama earlier in the week that she was in serious condition.

She was recently released from the hospital with a broken hip and a heart condition.

He has said before that he regrets not having the chance to say good-bye to his mother, who died of cancer in 1995,

“She poured everything she had into me.”

Obama plans to spend Friday with Dunham and his sister, leaving Hawaii in the late afternoon.
http://voices.washingtonpost.c.....awaii.html

Your Amazon review states the book’s premise is that the problem is squarely one of GOV’T regulation and collusion with the AMA. No mention in it that a capitalistic company like any of the BIG PHARMA’s or BIG HEALTH’s want to kill people off so they have no customer base. Honestly, GBJ, why does a company want to kill off it’s paying customers? A gov’t will kill you because you’re old and no longer producing tax revenue quicker than a for-profit company which must live by it’s record would.

In fact, here’s the direct review quote:

“In this book he details the history of how control of the medicinal market has been won by the FDA and the AMA (and similar organizations in other Nations), and how the healing of citizens has been put in the hands of the Government rather than in the hands of the citizens themselves. Their choices for treatment have been downsized to that of Allopathic medicine, a way of trreatment that is relatively new, only a few hundred years old, if at that, as compared to medicine that has been practiced for thousands of years.”

As JMG put it, GBJ, your…ellipses…and…sneers…against those of us who aren’t necessarily defending BIG anything but rather, are anti MONSTROUS tyranny by the gov’t fall flat because THERE AIN’T NO SUCH THING AS SMALL INSURANCE.

I don’t have any extreme conditions and most of my Rxs are generic.

And, if I had problems or knew of someone with problems I would call the local Lions Club, the LIons would help in a second.

Obama, reading this?

Do you have a citation for your very informative piece. I was under the impression that health insurance companies were raking it in.

And so I can’t even imagine Obama acting like he’s the one making everything electronic. VA already. Learned of this in ICU of private hospital and then they moved him to VA and the nurse there heard of it, and joked it’s ICU crazy condition. Things beeping constantly, does something to their brain.
what they call a new medical condition called ICU Dementia. Nurse joked it’s called ICU crazy. Nurses are having to more work on computers, and less time to see patients. So, I had to do this prescritpion card that was a mess. And ended up 3 days, and I had to call number on card, give computer personal information, and then pharmasist took 45 minutes, saying the cards were driving them nuts. Finally, another came over and helped him.