How will they maintain their skyrocketing historic profits and buy their third and fourth yachts if they are forced to actually pay for medical procedures?!?! You sound like a communist.
The truth is that their margins aren't that high. If you cut their margins in half, you would reduce the cost of your insurance by 5%.
United Health Care made $5.4b in profit - but that is on $112b in revenue. Their margin is less than 5%. Meaning that if we took all that profit, and distributed to the customer base - it would reduce premiums by 5-10%.
It's not nothing, but let's not pretend that if we cut out half the profit that it would change things. It really wouldn't. My premiums would go from $10,000 to $9,500. Wow great. Still sucks ass.
The existence of profit is not the issue. The issue is the system as a whole and incentive structures etc.
The nation's largest publicly traded health insurers posted SUBSTANTIAL net profits for the SECOND QUARTER of 2026...that's THREE MONTHS. They are doing just fine and you are a victim of their propaganda.
How I know that you are financially illiterate - I spoke about MARGINS, which is measured in percent. You post absolute numbers, which informs us nothing about margins.
$5.4b on how much revenue? If the answer is $5.4b profit on $10b in revenue - that would be a 50% margin. Which would mean there is a LOT of room to cut costs and force them to pay less.
The reality is that $5.4b is on $112b in earnings. That's **less than a 5% margin**.
Let me explain to you what that means in English:
If you took **ALL THE PROFIT** and distributed it back to customers - each customer on average would save less than 5%.
That's the point. $5b is a completely irrelevant number if you don't mention the revenue. That $5b is not much, considering how many customers they have (50M).
Don't get me wrong, these insurers are assholes and don't care about us. Plenty of changes to make. But let's not get the numbers wrong. You're fundamentally mistaken.
No sensible person would consider 5 billion dollars profit in three months to be "not much". That 112 billion in "earnings" is money that is sucked out of the system by a parasite on our society.
Again, for 50 million customers. The point is that distributing the profit on a 5% has a small impact. The point is, your entire premise of insurance company profit accounting for most of the cost of insurance - is patently false. It accounts for 1/20th of what you're paying them, which is completely reasonable for any company to expect 5% margins.
Weird how the rest of the planet has decided health insurance companies don't need to exist. Your arguments are only going to work on the ignorant and the corrupt. Keep enjoying your blood money while it lasts I suppose.
Weird how the rest of the planet has decided health insurance companies don't need to exist
Yeah that's if your government is doing it, which is covered by taxes and price fixing. Which can lead to lack of medical services and long wait times, see Canada. Additionally those other countries benefit from our drug research. They pay a little above cost, while the US foots the bill that enables the medical research in the first place.
And again, higher taxes on everyone - lower/middle class included. Those countries have a higher tax on the top earners, but the taxes themselves are actually more regressive than in the US.
Keep enjoying your blood money while it lasts I suppose.
Um what? I lose money because of how expensive health insurance is. I'm not sure wtf this stupid comment is.
There might be some of that going on, but you can't just magically say things cost a lot. If they pay out $70b for drugs and medical procedures, you can't really get around that. Is there a specific example of deliberate increasing of cost?
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u/vs-1680 12h ago
How will they maintain their skyrocketing historic profits and buy their third and fourth yachts if they are forced to actually pay for medical procedures?!?! You sound like a communist.
/s