News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Just How Profitable Are Healthcare Insurers?.

Re:Just How Profitable Are Healthcare Insurers? by ireadzalot on Monday March 08, 2010 @03:53PM (#1176391)
I highly recommend reading this short piece. Even though the profit margin is so small for Health Insurance Companies, “the better measurement is not profit, but return on invested capital (ROIC). ” One more line from the article: “If I had a business that consisted of people giving me $100 bills and me paying them back $96, it would be silly to describe that as a very low-profit industry.”

Source: The Economist

Link to Article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/03/he...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Just How Profitable Are Healthcare Insurers? by tullius on Monday March 08, 2010 @06:43PM (#1176891)
Profit margin is the important metric to look at in the context of moving to a socialized system. The stats in the linked article say that even if a public entity could run as efficiently as a private insurer there is only 3.7% surplus value to capture.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Just How Profitable Are Healthcare Insurers? by rwl on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:24AM (#1177678)
You are assuming that a public entity couldn't run more efficiently than a system of private ones, which is exactly the point -- or one of the points -- at issue.
[ Parent | on HN ]