Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director posted a White House blog calling Health Insurance Companies out for not spending enough on care:
“If we enact health reform, it will restrict how much of your premium dollars can be spent on profits and overhead by requiring health insurance companies to spend 80-85% of the money they take in on care.”
Obviously, Pfeiffer, much like his boss Obama, often neglects to bother researching those pesky little things called facts. Had the White House taken an hour or two to actually see how much Health Insurance Companies spend on medical expenses versus what they actually take in from premium revenue, they would have found that even the three largest insurance companies that they love to villify: Aetna, Wellpoint and United Health Group all spend 82-86% of revenue taken in from premiums on medical expenses as is stated in each of their Income Statements seen in the slide show below.
Obama is constantly railing against Health Insurance Companies for being huge profit mongers, at least that’s what he has made the American people believe, when in fact, they are far from villainous profiteers. Even the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact proved Obama's claims to be false: "We found Obama was wrong when he said in the news conference that health insurance companies are making record profits. He earns a False." Health Insurance Companies rank #86 in profit margins when compared to other industries. You can see the full list here.
To further make tomfoolery of the White House, Pfeiffer also made the follow comment in the blog:
“… Because right after the Insurance companies announced huge rate increases for families across the country, they gathered at the luxurious Ritz Carlton in Washington to announce that they are spending $1 million on ads to defeat health reform.
That money could probably be better spent keeping rates down for customers.”
Interesting, Obama wasn’t complaining about lobbying dollars and what the Health Sector was spending money on when they were spending millions on his Presidential Campaign. Obama raked in the most money of all Senators in 2008 from the Health Care Sector - $21 million to be exact with $1.5 million coming directly from the Health Insurance Industry. He behaves as if the Health Insurance Companies are American’s arch enemies yet it was clearly okay to take millions of dollars from them when it benefitted his own interests.
It seems that not a day goes by without Obama or someone in his Administration lying or acting hypocritically. While Obama is trying yet again to sell his Health Care Reform bill to his supporters around the country, he and his Administration continue to fail the American people by lying about his Health Care Reform bill, lying about Health Insurance Companies and hypocritically condemning the very same behavior that he engaged in previously - just another day in the Obama White House.
Photo from the DailyBeast
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