Jim Tumbls.

At least that’s how this story (which I am embarrassed the Associated Press allowed to be printed) wants you to feel.

Its argument is that those evil Democrats are unfairly accusing the health insurance companies of making obscene profits while letting people die when in reality the industry “only” made 2.2% profit last year, placing them at 35 out of Fortune’s 500 list. For this post we’ll ignore the fact that they were more profitable than 465 other industries on the list, many of which lost obscene amounts of money in one of the worst economic downturns in our history. Yeah - we’ll ignore that because the more important fact is that according to this article, the health insurance industry made a 2.2% profit last year. Now I’d been reading it’s a lot more (also one of the complaints of the article; saying we’re blowing it out of proportion) but let’s even stipulate that the industry only made 2.2% last year. (We’ll also ignore the fact that this was one of the worst years in terms of profits for the industry.)

This $400,000,000,000 industry only made 2.2% in profits last year. 2.2% doesn’t sound like a terribly large amount of money until we realize it’s just under $9 billion that went into the pockets of the CEOs, Executives, and shareholders (like me).

Now let me explain the obscene part to the obtuse writer of the AP article. Unlike the railroads, network & technology companies, Yahoo, and Tupperware who also made large percents in profits, the health insurance industry’s business is to keep people healthy and alive! I think the point my Democratic friends are trying to make (the one I’m trying to make at least) is that ANY profit made on peoples’ health is obscene.

How many underinsured people could the $9 billion have helped? How many pacemaker batteries could be replaced on people who’s insurance expired when they lost their jobs? How many preventable illnesses could have been avoided with simple checkups? How many cancer survivers could have been covered when they were denied coverage due to their pre-existing condition? THAT is the obscene part. Government is not the cause of all our problems. It’s not to say that it is the solution to them all either, but I think it can certainly do better than private industry in this case.