health insurance companies drain more than $6 billion annually from money spent for health care in the United States
I think that estimate is way, way too low: Insurance companies collected about $817 billion dollars in premiums in 2009. Their Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) averages around 80%, which is the percentage of those premiums that actually went to pay for medical care. So they are consuming 20% or our premium dollars on "overhead". In contrast, Medicare's overhead runs under 5%. So just by expanding Medicare to cover everyone currently paying health insurance premiums would save us 15% of $817 billion, or $122 billion dollars!
And don't forget: Insurance company executives have already testified before Congress that they are not happy with an MLR of 80%. They want permission to go as low as 65%! That would cost us another $122 billion.
I know: $122 billion may not seem like much money, but if you add up 10 years worth (as opponents to HCR love to do) it comes out to 1.22 trillion dollars.
