Obstruction Of Low-Priced Health Insurance By Decade-Long Profits
The health care reform now goes to the Senate and concerns over costs of legislation now increase. Supporters of health reform are stating that inexpensive health insurance is within reach if spending is regulated.
They have a good point there because a lot of health care companies which are listed on the Standard and Poor’s 500 have tripled their profits on average in the last 12 years.
Over a 10-year period there has been a significant loss for most economic sectors. But the health industry has continued to make more and more money which really does make sense because people are still going to be getting sick and having to go to hospitals and clinics to be cured or healed. The soaring health care costs over this time frame have really made it hard for people to continue to find the money for coverage.
Health insurance companies are usually the ones getting profit from the expensive healthcare plans. So, there’s no doubt that they have gained a lot from this over the last decade. According to stats, the six health insurance companies in the S&P 500 have made over $10 billion.
These massive profits definitely make health insurance more expensive. But insurance companies actually are the least money-making sectors in the healthcare industry. The profits they have right now are below what’s expected because the sales of health insurance have increased at the same time as the profits have.
If the insurers aren’t mainly responsible for the absence of affordable health insurance in the U.S., who is? Medical suppliers and medical device makers saw the most growth over the past decade. The former saw their profits improve by 17% since 2000, and the latter had margins of 15%.
At the same time, pharmaceutical firms doubled their profits, while raising their margins to nearly 25 percent. All of these industries have been responsible for valuable scientific advances in medicine. On the other hand, they have also led to the soaring cost of insurance during the same time frame.
How can we solve this problem? Control of prices is very unlikely but regulations passed for the health care bill will be able to help the health care industry and make health care insurance a bit more reasonable. There will definitely be more affordable health insurance in New Mexico if health insurers are not required to pay for very expensive rates for their services and supplies but no one is sure how to make it occur.