Know truth about insurance profits

Kudos to the Daily Herald and AP for the factual journalism done on this story. It seems to be a dying art. I do not work for or never have worked for a health insurer.

The lies and misinformation about health insurance company profits have been so out of sight, I no longer trust anything coming out of this administrations mouth. 6 percent profit is at the low end of the largest 500 companies in America. The average is about 8 percent. Not mentioned in the article is that before taxes profits were 10 percent, but the federal and local taxes eat up the rest.

The ugly truth is, if a public option is legislated four things will happen. The private insurers will go out of business, consumers will have no liability recourse, the deficit will get larger as the current collected taxes will evaporate and investors, mutual funds, 401k and IRA will take a huge loss.

Based on sound business models, the argument for more competition is backward. Most would say there may be too much competition already in health care insurance.

Richard Francke

Bartlett