WASHINGTON – 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:

THE CLAIMS

_"I'm very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers' "obscene profits."

_"Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed." Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership.

_"Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe." A MoveOn.org ad.

THE NUMBERS:

Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries. As is typical, other health sectors did much better — drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10.
The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent.

HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That's a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers.

The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin.

UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue.

Van Hollen is right that premiums have more than doubled in a decade, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found a 131 percent increase.

But were the Bush years golden ones for health insurers?

Not judging by profit margins, profit growth or returns to shareholders. The industry's overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never cracked 8 percent.
The latest annual profit margins of a selection of products, services and industries: Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent; Yahoo, 5.9 percent; Hershey, 6.1 percent; Clorox, 8.7 percent; Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent; construction and farm machinery, 5 percent; Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent.

-AP
___
Associated Press writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

After Obama and his top advisers had a secret meeting with commentators from MSNBC and New York Times reporters... and after saying "Fox News is a wing of the republican party", the White House live feeds MSNBC to "correct" them. Who is a wing of who?

"The White House did just e-mail saying that interaction with Jake Tapper was not heated..." - during a live discussion.



Big Brother is watching you and he doesn't want you talking ill of him.

By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) An advisory report on the protection of human rights in the context of counter terrorism recently submitted to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (GA) includes a radical redefinition of the term "gender," claiming that it is a purely social construct not connected to biology.

UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin was asked to report to the UN on "gender-based human rights abuses in counterterrorism measures" – with an intended focus presumably upon hardships encountered by women caught up in the war on terror. Instead, in his report, Scheinin asserted "Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social responsibilities that underlie how women's and men's roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood."

Labeling gender a "social construct," the non-binding submission claims that "gender is not static," but rather "changeable over time and across contexts." Readers are told that "understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counterterrorism measures."

Such a definition of gender has been bitterly debated in formal UN settings for years and has been rejected repeatedly by member states in negotiated UN documents. There is a longtime tension on this question between the sovereign states of the GA and the UN bureaucracy. Even though the GA has repeatedly defined gender in a traditional way, the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women defines gender, similar to this new bureaucratic report, as a social construct.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which is binding upon ratifying nations, states that gender "refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society." In addition, two non-binding UN conference outcome documents – the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the Report of the Conference on Human Settlements held the following year in Istanbul – consider "gender" to be "understood in its ordinary, generally accepted usage."

Another concern with this new document is its promotion of “gender identity and sexual orientation.” The document asserts that three treaties – including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – now require States to ensure "de jure and de facto" non-discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation and gender identity." In support, the report cites the non-binding Yogyakarta Principles, a statement devised by representatives from various non-governmental organizations and UN special rapporteurs. Critics point out that not only do the treaty texts fail to mention sexual orientation and gender identity as a human rights category, but member states have repeatedly rejected inclusion of such a category.

Originally circulated during the sleepy summer months, the report has only recently begun to attract attention from delegates to the GA's Third Committee, which is the usual forum for vetting contentious social issues. One delegate told the Friday Fax that "it would not be surprising that not only was the document released during the summer months," but that it was snuck into a report ostensibly on counterterrorism to avoid immediate notice. He speculated that once implanted, advocates would begin to cite the "stealth" document as additional authority in support of a gay rights agenda.

http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1452/pub_detail.asp

Hope you've heard the news by now.

The Associated Press itself reported that Barack Obama was Kenyan Born.

http://thepostnemail.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/ap-declares-obama-kenyan-born/

so much for complaining about "birthers" when they themselves were one of the first.

In the fall of 2004, in which [Alan] Keyes faulted Obama for not being a “natural born citizen”, and in which Obama, by his quick retort, “So what? I am running for Illinois Senator, not the presidency”, self-admitted that he was not eligible for the office.

on January 8, 2006, the Honolulu Advertiser also reported that Barack Hussein Obama was born outside the United States.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/08/ln/FP601080334.html

^ that's the corrected version.

In the archived page, they note he was born in Indonesia.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060207151627/http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/08/ln/FP601080334.html

So whats the truth?