Comment by lotsofpulp

shimman claimed

>hundreds of billions in profit that health insurance companies extract

yet no request for evidence?

Here's data for medical loss ratios:

https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/medical-loss-ratio-reb...

https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2023/mar/...

Here are the sub 5% profit margins for the publicly listed insurers. On the same website, clicking on the "Revenue & Profit" tab will show you that all of the health insurers, combined, earn less than $50B of profit per year, and most of that is probably not even insurance related since a large portion comes from UNH's enormous healthcare provider business.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-g...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CVS/cvs-health/pro...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CI/cigna-group/pro...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ELV/elevance-healt...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HUM/humana/profit-...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CNC/centene/profit...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MOH/molina-healthc...

The above obviously does not include the many millions of Americans covered by non profit insurers, such as Kaiser Permanence, Providence, Cambia, and the various Blue Cross plans.

Here are the 5 year returns for the above businesses compared to SP500:

https://i.imgur.com/S8bNSM2.png

Suffice to say, you would not want to be a shareholder of a health insurer.