more healthcare ranting

Well someone made a comment basically saying that polls and statistics and such can be misleading. she had a good point, sometimes you find what you want to find. so i went to the homepages of the top 6 health insurance companies as listed on fortune... 500. it is required that public companies post a quarterly report which includes revenues and net profits. i took the net profits of the 6 biggest and added them up..
the total net profits of the big 6 was about 2,481,000,000, for the first quarter. multiply that by 4 to get a year, and you got yourself about a 10 billion dollar a year industry. im assuming that since net profits aare taken out after business expenses, that these dont include the insane c.e.o. pay or the corporate jets and other perks. so here is what my question is.....
Why is this drain on our society needed? I mean what is insurance really. Its a way to spread the risk. all these companies do is take money from a large group of people, lump it all together, and when someone needs the money, they take it out of the collection. so why is it that we let only 6 companies get to take 10 billion dollars out of this ... Read Morefund this year and claim them as profits? And 2009 has been a bad year for health insurance companies, what with the mass lay-offs and such, people and companies just arent buying as much insurance.
Its just plain immoral, and should be illegal to let FOR PROFIT companies control our insurance funds, they dont provide any real service, all they do is collect money and skim off as much from the top as they can. It is in the for profit companies best interest to deny as many claims as possible and to do everything they can to keep sick people off their insurance and healthy people on it. they are for profit companies, and everything they do is for profit.
So is every other industrialized country in the world wrong? most of the other civilized countries have made it illegal for private companies to sell basic health care policies. some countries let the government take care of the all of the healthcare, and at least one doesnt involve the government at all, and has not-for-profit insurance companies ... Read Moreto take care of the basic health care insurance. some countries have systems that work better than others, and no system will ever be perfect, but to say that america is the only country that has it right by letting for profit companies run the whole thing, its just insanity.
So lets just look at one company. unitedhealthgroup.com check it out yourself if you would like. according to their own reports, they made a net profit of 11,790,000,000 dollars from 2006 to 2008. im still unclear as to wether the insane ceo pay, the corporate jet and other perks, or the millions of dollars of advertising, or the millions of ... Read Moredollars of lobbying in d.c. are included in this or are considered "business expenses." but either way, there is at least 12 billion dollars, over 3 years, from 1 company, that was taken from a pool of money meant to spread the risk, rather than doing what the money was meant for, and thats paying for peoples health care. 12 billion dollars worth of meds, surgeries, exams, etc., just gone, for no reason at all. and this is just one company! and we, as a country, should be ok with this? i just dont see it.