BIG GOOGLE/BING CHALLENGE
Think You Are Good at Using Search Engines?
Find this fact for me and you will be LIONIZED on good old SeniorJunior!
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The UNFINDABLE (to me so far) Fact:
Total expenditure in the U.S. on health insurance premiums to for-profit health insurance companies?????
If you search exactly that (just above^) question, you get a fine US News & World Report article, but it's still impossible to know the answer to this question.
Statistica also has some answers, but EVERYBODY COMBINES HEALTH AND LIFE INSURANCE premiums for analysis. (Why do they do that?) Much of the data is "per-capita," but omits the uninsured, etc.
I searched for this very basic piece of information for a good hour. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd believe the for-profit health insurance companies have made a huge (and successful) effort to hide this number.
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It's definitely huge. Combine all the employer-provided health insurance, all the privately-purchased, union purchased, local and state government purchased health insurance and we are talking hundreds of billion$ in healthcare premiums. Maybe trillions! Who knows? (And never mind the other sources of income for these companies, their vast stock and bond holdings; I'm just looking for income from premiums.)
It's important to get this number. Why?
"Medicare for All" is actually being considered. Those who oppose it (mostly the for-profit insurers, of course) scream "How are you going to pay for it?" and "It'll bankrupt the country," etc.
They know that once we know how much money we send them every year, the answer will be obvious. There is no longer any question that Medicare is a far more efficient form of health insurance than they are. United Healthcare, Blue Cross, Anthem, Humana, WellPoint, et al are hugely profitable companies with "administrative costs" triple those of Medicare. Their rules are so complicated that doctors, clinics and hospitals must have huge staffs just to handle all the different forms of paperwork necessary to get paid, and they pass along those expenses to us. Many docs are simply quitting their practices because of the cost and complications coming from the for-profits.
SO... limber up your search fingers and find this number. America needs to understand this point!
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