Sister Toldjah is seeing things

And that is a good thing. Because what she is seeing is, while hard to believe, quite positive! 

Somebody apparently didn’t get their DNC talking points:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making “immoral” and “obscene” returns while “the bodies pile up.”

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Insurers are an expedient target for leaders who want a government-run plan in the marketplace. Such a public option would force private insurers to trim profits and restrain premiums to compete, the argument goes. This would “keep insurance companies honest,” says President Barack Obama.

The debate is loaded with intimations that insurers are less than straight, when they are not flatly accused of malfeasance.

They may not have helped their case by commissioning a report that looked primarily at the elements of health care legislation that might drive consumer costs up while ignoring elements aimed at bringing costs down. Few in the debate seem interested in a true balance sheet.

But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. A look at some claims, and the numbers:

This isn’t unlike the left’s war against so-called “Big Oil” in which all they talk about is the “massive profits” Big Oil takes in … without mentioning how Big Oil pays double that amount in taxes every year. It’s classic leftist strategy: Come up with an idea to “resolve” a “problem” they’ve inflated to extreme distortion and in the process, demonize the alleged “causes” of that problem to death in order to rally Average Joes around to their way of thinking.

Like I said, give AP credit here, for not just asking how much Obama water they can carry.

 

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