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from Quora (Franklin Veaux)
Why are Americans still against universal healthcare after decades of abuse from health insurance companies?
Because they’ve had decades of slick, highly polished propaganda from insurance company marketers.
I’ll give you an example:
When you talk to someone who’s strongly opposed to universal health care, one of the arguments you’ll likely hear—I’ve heard this argument trotted out over and over again—is that insurance company profits are quite small, typically between 2% and 3.3%.
That makes people believe that health insurance companies only add a tiny percentage to healthcare costs: two or three percent.
Wrong. Wrongo Wrongo wrong wrong wrong.
This is the Minnetonka headquarters of UnitedHealth:
The cost of this building is not included in their profits.
The cost of paying every person who works in this building is not included in their profits.
The cost of the thousands of other buildings they own and the 440,000 people they employ (yes, seriously, 440,000 people) is not included in their profits.
The cost of their investments is not included in their profits. When you send your insurance premium in, that money doesn’t sit in a bank account. The insurance companies invest it in for-profit enterprises. For example UnitedHealth is a huge landlord, with over a billion dollars’ worth of rental housing in its portfolio, administered by a large network of subsidiaries you probably have no idea are associated with a health insurer.
In 2023, UnitedHealth posted total revenue of $371,600,000,000 and paid out $308,428,000,000 in medical claims, for a difference of $63,172,000,000.
That’s sixty-three billion dollars just one insurance company brought in that did not go to paying for healthcare.
So no, private for-profit insurance does not add only 2% to healthcare costs.
But their propaganda makes it sound like it does, and a lot of Americans believe that it does.
And that’s not even counting the ridiculous made-up horror stories about wait times and such in places with universal healthcare. Those stories are obviously absurd, but most Americans never travel abroad so they have no idea how ridiculous the lies are that they’re swallowing.
