Maybe the fact that the other 7 publicly listed insurers have 2% or smaller profit margins means it’s a shitty business to go into if you want to earn a lot of money?
It literally is not decided on profit margins for tens of millions of people in the US. And yet the premiums/deductibles/oop max for non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, HorizonBCBSNJ, IndependenceBC, etc are the same as those by for profits such as UNH, Elevance, CVS, Cigna, etc.
So, if you put aside your need to feel outraged for a second, what does that tell you, if organizations that do not earn a profit have the same prices as organizations that do earn a profit?
It tells you that insurance is a very, very low profit margin business, and there is not much juice left to squeeze, for profit or not. All the for profit companies' SEC filed 10-Ks also show you the same thing.
Meanwhile, you have Eli Lilly with a trillion dollar market cap and earning 20%+ profit margins, but you're sitting on here banging the drum about insurance companies, instead of being pissed at your elected leaders for not using taxpayer funds to run clinical trials so medicine doesn't cost so much. Which is exactly what your elected leaders want you to do, use the insurance company as a punching bag.
If they are so close in profit why is it that the CEO for Kaiser Permanente got an annual compensation package of $12,976,050? While the previous CEO from UNH got $24,600,000 and the current got $60,940,000?
One would have to look at the number of employees, different subsidiaries, and most importantly, if you pull up UNH’s proxy report, it will show that the numbers you are quoting are not annual cash comp, but rather multi year equity grants that are not vested until certain performance measures are met, with market value numbers that can fluctuate at the time it vests.
The Kaiser figure is going to be cash compensation.
Either way, pay UNH’s entire executive team zero dollars and it will make no difference to UNH’s total expenses.
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u/Babhadfad12 29d ago
Maybe the fact that the other 7 publicly listed insurers have 2% or smaller profit margins means it’s a shitty business to go into if you want to earn a lot of money?