The Poor, Underserved Insurance Industry

I was at my in-law's yesterday, as we've been spending a lot of time there lately helping them get moved into their new home and helping unpack and get settled. It's fun and I enjoy their company, so that's cool. But as is often the case when at their house, I was subject to a lot of FOX News. The father in law is a FOX News addict. He's good people, so don't hold that against him, it's just that he's definitely in that demographic, 70+ yrs. old, white, male, upper-middle class, Christian...You get the picture. I love him. And he loves me. And he always accepted me as his daughter in law and even came to our wedding, which is more than I can say about my own father. But we are definitely on vastly opposite ends of the political spectrum.

So anywho, FOX news was on and The Wifester, her mom, and I were in earshot as we sat at the dining room table carving pumpkins. The folks over there at FOX were discussing Obamacare, of course, and they had on a governor, I didn't catch where from, but this yahoo said, and I quote, he said, "Not a single one of my constituents has been able to sign up for Obamacare, and every single one of them has lost their insurance through their jobs because of Obamacare. Every single one!"

That made me laugh out loud, but I had to compose myself and pretend that The Wifester was making faces at me or something. Honestly, though, who believes that every single person in this guy's state has lost their health care? I find that one hard to fall for. He went on and on with that, and at one point The Wifester gave me that quick look that I know means, "Are you hearing this garbage??" And I gave her the quick glance that says, "Yes, yes I am." It's great to have someone who reads your eyes and knows exactly what you mean. We often do this little communication without speaking.

But that wasn't even the funniest part of it all- Next up was a guy saying that what The USA really needs is a single payer plan, and that Medicare should just take over health care and allow every person access to it. I agree with that, but here's where it got good, the FOX news anchor dude was totally aghast, and  interrupted this guy saying, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Medicare is wrought with fraud, they have $XXX (he quoted some amount in the billions) of waste each year, and their process for approving claims takes longer than private insurance companies. Meanwhile, Medicare is raking in the profits while wasting taxpayer money, and over here you have the guys running private insurance companies, who are barely scraping by with hardly any profits at all! What other industries do you want to arbitrarily kill off?"
Yes, he actually argued that private insurance providers are "barely scraping by with hardly any profits at all."
I wish each and every one of you could see the face that The Wifester was making at that comment. In fact, as soon as we got in the car to leave there last night she busted out with a big laugh and said, "What about that guy saying the Insurance Industry is barely scraping by..."
We had a good laugh. I mean, really, does anyone really believe that? Honestly.

So today I did a quick google search on "Insurance industry profits 2012" and this was one of the first returns:

source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/industries/223/

Yeah. Looks like those guys are barely getting by.