Surprise!! Obama Gang Lies About Health Insurers

Who would have thunk that politicians lie?

Well, John Lott did, and proves it.

Two claims are made all the time in the health care debate: 1) that there is little competition among those providing health insurance and 2) that it is important to take the profit motive out of providing health insurance. Both are myths. It turns out that claims about too little competition are based on a misinterpretation of the data and that non-profit insurers are so abundant that the largest insurer in virtually every state is a non-profit.

"Health Insurers" in most cases are the employers.

...for most people it is their employer, not the insurance companies, that pays for any bad health outcomes. The firm does so out of the company’s own pocket. The companies do what is called “self-insure” or “self-fund” their plans, and that occurs for around 55 percent of employees according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality with the Department of Health and Human Services.

And that "concentration" thing? BS:

...For Alabama, instead of the “almost 90% is controlled by just one company,” as the president claims, the correct number is 36 percent. The second largest company has just 2.1 percent of the market

So what about President Obama’s claim that in the 34 states most concentrated states 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies? Given that self-insured firms cover 57 percent of people insured in those states, the correct total market share for the largest five firms control is 32 percent, not 75 percent.

As to the "profits": also BS.

Given all the attacks on profit-making insurance companies, what is possibly more surprising is that by far the dominant players in the "full" insurance market are non-profits. Indeed, one of the motives of the government insurance option is to take profits out of the picture. "But having a public plan out there that also shows that maybe if you take some of the profit motive out, maybe if you are reducing some of the administrative costs, that you can get an even better deal, that's going to incentivize the private sector to do even better. And that's a good thing," President Obama told the nation during his July 22nd press conference.

Yet, in 29 of the 43 states that data are available for in the American Medical Association report mentioned earlier, the dominant company in the "full" insurance market is a non-profit company. In state after state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield hold the largest market share. On average, the largest non-profit hold over half of the “full” market share in those 29 states.

Who would have thought that Obama is actually the Liar-in-Chief? /sarcasm