Insurance Companies

We all know that the insurance lobby is a major force behind the resistance of the blue dog democrats and republicans joining the call for true health care reform. I ask myself more and more why do we even have insurance companies, and if we didn't have them what would be the effect on the American people. First here is a list of the top 14 insurance companies as ranked in terms of revenue by Forbes:

Rank	Company	Fortune 1000 rank	Revenue$ millions	% change from 2007	Profit $ millions	% change from 2007
1	UnitedHealth Group	21	81,186.0	7.6	2,977.0	-36.0
2	WellPoint	32	61,251.1	0.2	2,490.7	-25.5
3	Aetna	77	30,950.7	12.1	1,384.1	-24.4
4	Humana	85	28,946.4	14.5	647.2	-22.4
5	Cigna	132	19,101.0	8.4	292.0	-73.8
6	Health Net	165	15,366.6	8.9	95.0	-51.0
7	Coventry Health Care	226	11,913.6	20.6	381.9	-39.0
8	WellCare Health Plans	381	6,521.9	21.0	-36.8	-117.0
9	Universal American	494	4,659.2	53.5	95.1	13.1
10	Amerigroup	509	4,516.0	14.5	-50.7	-143.5
11	Centene	609	3,515.2	20.1	83.5	13.8
12	Molina Healthcare	673	3,112.4	24.9	62.4	7.0
13	Medical Mutual of Ohio	806	2,387.1	2.2	73.5	-18.1
14	HealthSpring	849	2,188.3	39.0	119.0	37.6

Just these top 14 insurance companies bought in $275.6 billion in revenue and about $8.6 billion in profit. This means that with the current US population of 307,025,874 we paid these insurance companies $900 each and they made $28 from every person in the country. If you factor in the uninsured into the equation, each family of four was responsible for $4,240 that went directly to the insurance companies not including that which might have been paid by American families in the form of co-payments and general out of pocket expenses. United Health just reported increased profits of $859 million for last quarter which puts them on pace for making $3.44 billion in profit this year....

While insurance may offer a beneficial role in the health care system (still unproven in my opinion), would it not be better to have these companies operate as non-profits?? Do what you need to in order to employee people and run the company efficiently, but do not raise premiums on families just to suit your investors on Wall St. The public option is drastically needed, but with money like this fighting against it we can see who our congressmen/women really work for.... Sphere: Related Content