Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that “insurance company profits are ‘way over anybody’s estimates.’ She said the five largest U.S. insurers took in combined profits of $12.2 billion in 2009, 56 percent higher than in 2008.”
Whoa, slow down there Kathy! Are you trying to tell me that five multi-billion dollar companies managed to make almost $2.5 billion each in profits in a single year? Shock! Outrage!
By way of comparison, Apple Inc. earned slightly over $8.2 billion dollars in net profit all by itself in it’s 2009 Fiscal Year, yet I haven’t heard liberals citing that as cause for nationalizing the computer industry. (OK, recently.)
For another point of comparison, those health care profits may be as little as one tenth the total cost of bailing out GM and Chrysler.
What, pray tell, do Obama and Sebelius think are “acceptable” levels of profit would be for those five companies?
This is supposed to be a supporting point in the quest to nationalize 1/6th of the American economy? Not to mention that the true government cost of ObamaCare is estimated to top 6 trillion dollars.
Compared to the total costs for ObamaCare, health insurance company profits are a rounding error.