Quote:
Originally Posted by dippin
I said that the "margin of profit" is a meaningless number when it comes to companies like health insurance companies, because they can play around with those numbers using stuff like "Expected payouts."
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You use the term or concept "play around", I would not. The industry is heavily regulated, and the numbers are looked at very closely by independent rating agencies. In addition they have outside analysts looking at the numbers, investors and other stake holders parse the numbers and ask questions. So, to a degree they can try to justify certain assumptions that may be favorable to a short-term political agenda, but those assumptions have to stand up to scrutiny. Please understand I am not for a minute saying I would blindly trust the numbers from a large corporation, just like I question government I question corporate rhetoric - I read the fine print and footnotes, regardless.