Recent comments

<blockquote>"One thing that few people understand is that most quality health insurance carriers pay 80% to 90% of premium dollars out in benefits."</blockquote> What more and more people are coming to understand is that 10 - 20 percent of premiums paid out for dividends, executive salaries and perks, and advertising and PR, not to mention lobbying our government maintain the status quo, is just too much. <blockquote>...but if the reason for the increased premiums were excess profits the market would fix the problem. Health insurance companies that only operate in certain states would come into other states and offer lower premiums and "fix the problem."</blockquote> Oh, right. Actually, long experience shows that "competing" companies would much rather divvy up markets and fix prices than engage in real competition, which is why we have anti-trust law. Are the for-profit insurers willing to give up their current anti-trust exemptions? <blockquote>It has happened with the phone companies and with computers and many other goods and services. When the profits got high enough competition came into the market. </blockquote> Yeah. The trick, though, is not to get sick or injured while you wait for that hoped-for principle to kick in, or bankrupted in the process of making the profits high enough. Selling iPods belongs in the for-profit sector. Health insurance does not.