Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Is that the one in which there's only one choice?

 

In Alabama, BCBS has about 85% of the market. They squeeze physicians, hospitals, and labs the way that Walmart squeezes suppliers. I've seen basic blood labs where a private pay patient (no insurance) pays four times as much as BCBS pays for the same lab work. They have a functional monopoly.

"The company's high executive pay and generous bonuses have raised questions in the past. The top ten executives at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama earned more than $1 million each in 2013, according to Al.com. President and CEO Terry Kellogg earned a total of $4.84 million that year. ~Sep 28, 2015"

Why am I quoting 2013 figures?

Want to see what Alabama insurance executives make? New law says that's now secret

Somebody is making money, lots of it.

 

The U.S. has an accidental insurance system. Back in the Fifties and Sixties, corporations came up with the idea of providing health insurance coverage for their executives. That way they could provide a valuable benefit without it being taxable income. Over time, this benefit spread to entire companies, and this sort of benefit became the norm. There wasn't any particular reason that employers should be providing health care, but that was what became common.

There was never an overall plan, just layers and layers of patchwork. It's unwieldy as hell.

 

Best as I can tell, BCBS of Alabama had about a 6% return on revenues in 2011, and that was before ACA-related losses started kicking in.

Agreed, but it goes back further than that. Health insurance as a form of compensation was used as an end-around of WWII wage controls.

 

Appreciate the correction, I spitballed the dates. Busted being lazy. I know better than to do that around here, lol.

"Best as I can tell, BCBS of Alabama had about a 6% return on revenues in 2011, and that was before ACA-related losses started kicking in."


Six percent does not sound like much until the total dollars are out there. I've had this argument before, when Exxon had the highest corporate profit ever recorded. It was getting kicked around on a message board, might have been here.

"Well, yeah, but they have a lot invested, they only got six percent ROI" (or whatever the percentage was). Yeah, but whatever the percentage it was an absolutely huge pile of dollars, the biggest ever.

Businesses can go two ways in a general sense. If you go for a high profit, you will generally sell less but get more profit on what you sell. You can go for a lower percentage and a high volume and make your pile that way. That's the Walmart model, so obviously it can work very well indeed.

That's why the six percent does not necessarily mean to me that poor BCBS is just barely keeping the lights on.

 

Nah. You certainly didn't rise to the level of "dishonest!" or "trolling!" No biggie.

 

Yeah, it was just from the hip, not twisting facts for debating gains.

I edited above, you might want another shot at me.

 

I got a job interview with them once. My jaw nearly hit the floor when the HR drone handling my interview, who looked like she had graduated college the previous morning, informed me that it was considered mandatory for all employees to take payroll deductions for United Way since the company was a non-profit. If BC/BS of Alabama is nonprofit, so is the Gambino family.

 

How quickly does Hannity bolt Fox for a role with whatever Trump does, assuming he's not president? Nov. 9?

 

Charlie Mackenzie: Hey Mom, I find it interesting that you refer to the Weekly World News as, "The paper." The paper contains facts.

May Mackenzie: This paper contains facts. And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world. Right? Plenty of facts. "Pregnant man gives birth." That's a fact.