http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/0...lth-insurance-industry-report-record-profits/
There is one more step. The health-insurance industry has, in effect, socialized the risk and privatized the profit, similar to the way the Wall Street banksters socialized their billions in debt and privatized their profits after the economic meltdown.
While health-care industry profits grew by 22 percent last year, at least in part because they jacked up their prices, 50 million Americans — mostly small-business owners, the self-employed and lower-income families — went without coverage, mostly because they couldn’t afford the premiums.
When the uninsured needed care, they went to hospitals — the most expensive setting for medical care, where they received treatment which they also could not afford. And here’s the last step: Their unpaid hospital bills — $49 billion last year — were paid by tax payers, mostly at the local level.
Socialize the risk, privatize the profit.
Republicans like to blame the victims — the uninsured deadbeats — but it is these same Republicans who insist that only private industry, not the government, can solve problems.
And, in fact, private insurers could solve this crisis tomorrow, if they had a reason to. All they would have to do is lower the price of premiums to make them affordable.