And the tax rate is more like 20%. If pre-tax is 5.1% of overall revenue, taking roughly 20% out of that amount would make your after tax profit 4.1%.

So for the year highlighted it seems that for every $6.10 you paid Wellpoint, you got $4.70 worth of healthcare, paid $1.08 in admin fees, and gave 31 cents to the shareholders.

We should trust the government with very, very little. Certainly not our health care.

There is a golden opportunity rapidly approaching for us to peacefully assemble in massive numbers and demonstrate our resolve to oppose the pure evil of socialist enslavement. It is the 09.12.09 March on Washington.

This is perfect timing, as the Senate will potentially be voting on Obamacare later in September. In a truly Orwellian move, Obama is scheduled to make a major announcement concerning expansion of AmeriCorps on September 11.

I will be there, and I hope to see thousands of other American Thinker fans there, as well.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/beware_the_counterrevolution.html

Although, I don’t see any evidence of that in the town halls! They still don’t seem to be trying to listen to the different viewpoints….

I concur, lorac. We do need reform and not just another means for insurance companies to line their pockets to our detriment. There are all sort of ways to reform healthcare that don’t include more money for administrators, lawyers, bureaucrats, and figureheads. We need to cut out the middleman, as it were.

Baxter International

The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.
And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

But there seems to be no repercussions or hard feelings when industry oversteps the boundaries of morality and integrity and enters the arena of obscenity. Because, lo and behold, which company has been chosen to head up efforts, along with WHO, to produce a vaccine against the Mexican swine flu?

It was Baxter International

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/02/27/8560781.html

Wonder who owns stock in Baxter International? More of just the Chicago Way?

Baxter International Inc. (NYSE: BAX), is an American health care company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_International

There is NO healthcare “bill” in Congress.

And anyone who goes around telling people what “is in” the healthcare bill is misleading people.

There are currently THREE different bills in the House and at least TWO in the senate.

Even if each house of Congress passes SOME healthcare bill, the two houses will still have to reconcile any differences between their two versions.

In addition, there are numerous proposed amendments to each of the bills.

What we do know for sure is that there is NO single-payer proposal in ANY of the current bills — and the reason for that is that Obama and the influential members of Congress have been PAID OFF by the corporate health interests.

Furthermore, our president is the consummate CON-MAN.

During his campaign last year, Obama criticized big pharmaceutical firms for blocking efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. But since the election, the LA Times reports, “the industry’s chief lobbyist”- former Congressman Billy Tauzin - “has morphed into the president’s partner.He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months.There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn’t try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.”
http://www.truthout.org/080509H?n

That’s what a con-man does: He promises you wonderful things but delivers garbage.

The story gets worse. For instance, “Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe.”

Meanwhile, with a “mandate” herd of cash cows on the national horizon,the health insurance industry is licking its chops. The corporate glee is ill disguised as the Obama administration pushes for legal mandates to require that Americans buy health insurance — no matter how dismal the quality of the coverage or how un-affordable the “affordable” premiums turn out to be for real people in the real world.

The mandates would involve “diverting additional billions to private insurers by requiring middle-class Americans to purchase defective policies from these firms — policies with so many gaps and loopholes that they currently leave millions of our insured patients vulnerable to financial ruin,” says a letter signed by more than 3,500 doctors and released last week by Physicians for a National Health Program.
http://www.truthout.org/080509H?n

Obama is no longer committed to “healthcare” reform; all he’s after now is “health insurance reform.”

I seem to recall that Obama took in nearly $19 million from health-care companies and their employees. http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/533/9/

Gee.

This simple list of the big four health insurance compainies’ money in/money out is easy to understand. Now, we can ask specifically, where’d you big companies spend all your money? Who’s your banker? Which political campaigns have you supported with your money? Who do you make deals with in Congress and the WH? AAAANNNNNDDD, when did you know bho the fraud was a selfish, self-centered, ignorant, lying, cheating narcissistic power grubbing puppet whose strings you could easily pull????

Although, I don’t see any evidence of that in the town halls! They still don’t seem to be trying to listen to the different viewpoints….

But taxes vital to the nation, such as taxes to support the presidency and Congress, taxes for the military and taxes for infrastructure, have always been part of the American system. Gradually, other services have come to be seen as vital and necessary for the common good, like education, police services, & firefighters. Imagine what a mess the country would be if the police and fireservices were private, and were not available to everyone.

Why is it such a stretch to think of primary healthcare services as something that should be available to all, equally?

The problem with the Obamacare legislation is not that it tries to institute universal coverage. The problem is not that Obamacare tries to mandate coverage for all legal residents in the United States: - the problem is that the legislation lets the insurance companies set their own prices, and many of the new policy holders the insurance companies will get as a ‘windfall’ of this legislation will have their premiums subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The problem with the Obamacare insurance reform is that is doesn’t really reform the insurance system at all. It just extends it and gives it massive new revenues, without any real attempt to limit the greed, corruption and profiteering that are now the core of the system. The legislation also makes only a laughable attempt to control the obscene prices Americans pay for drugs.

If Obama were to legislate real reform, and move to a Single Payer Canadian-style system, or at least to a system based on the Swiss model, Americans would get better care, and pay less for it. Americans need to realize that no other country in the Western world has such expensive healthcare, and that this spending is not buying them better care.

See, the old admin fought terrorists

LMAO troll. Cheney convinced Shrub to enrich Haliburton and Blackwater but did zero to contribute to our safety. They mainly looted our treasury to line the pockets of THEIR supporters. Real safety would have included a real barrier on our border to the south. I don’t see one, yet.

I don’t like and didn’t vote for That One and left the Democratic party after 32 years. That does not translate into support for the previous Administration, which will now be relegated to the position of second-worst in history now that the Anointed One will take that honor.

Bush/Cheney created tax policies to redistribute wealth upwards; That One and bots want to create tax policies to redistribute wealth downwards. Since the middle-class, of which I am a member, always gets the bill, it matters not to whom the money is going–I’m still paying.

What I would dearly love to see is the day when you slack-jawed right-wing extremists and unicorn-riding left-wing extremists get kicked to the curb by a pissed-off centrist majority.

Oh..but He’s just an Expert on the BUDGET..
and OBAMA …with all his Background and administrative experiences says It will be REVENUE NEUTRAL..

See, its simple..you want to COAST..Put Er in Neuteral..

Drifting..Bobbing along..In Neuteral..

Didn’t believe anything Rev. Wright said..I was Neuteral..

Didn’t know anything bout the SDS and Billy Bomber Ayers…I was just a kid and Neuteral..

Didn’t know about the viscious attacks on Sarah Palin..I was Neuteral..

Wasn’t a muslim..I was neuteral..Don’t even go to Church anymore..I’m so neuteral..

Obama flys on Air Force one so Much..he is real Proof that hot Air Rises..and planes can fly on Neuteral Revenue…

How to Create a National Health Care Debacle

1. Write a thousand page bill giving government control of all facets of health care.

2. Deny angrily that the bill constitutes government run health care.

3. Scoff at the very idea of reading the bill.

4. Pass an amendment excluding coverage for abortion, and vote down the amendment on the second ballot.

5. Campaign against the insurance companies’ windfall profits, and then order individuals to buy insurance under penalty of additional taxes.

6. Imply that oponents of the plan are Nazis, or constitute a mob.

7. Imply that insurance companies are behind the mobs of protesters.

8. Have the president drop hints that there will be tough choices to make about end of life care.

9. Have the president deny that he intends to kill or euthanize grandma.

10. Let CBO score cost of the plan at a trillion dollars.

11. Make the president insist that the plan must be passed in order to cut escalating health care costs.

12. Hint to single payer supporters that the bill will lead to single payer.

13. Give millions to the ad firm for the president’s campaign, in order to sell the plan.

well, they’ll FIX things alright, they use those in misery for their own powergrubbing, they’ll TAKE CARE of you alright, so you won’t have any more freedoms left (or money!)

might as well revoke your US citizenship before 2013 since illegals get to vote, get healthcare free, no fines or taxes to pay…..why keep getting your ass kicked as a US citizen?

Another Developing BUBBLE..then

Budget Ceilings will be raised as high as the amount bullshit BO can shove in it.

Informative post Craig.