[dragonwriter]

> Why's it have to come out as profits? Couldn't they just be a big lumbering bureaucracy that never gets cut because they never have pricing pressure?

Not with the ACA limits on share of premium costs not going to care they couldn't. Before the ACA, they certainly could.

> For the record, this kind of industry BS is why liberals support single-payer healthcare. It's not that we're commies or even that we don't understand the inefficiency of government bureaucracy. It's that we'd prefer the dumb public bureaucracy to our current even dumber private bureaucracy.

> Something being 'private' without pricing pressure isn't capitalism.

Yes, it is capitalism. Its not free, efficient, competitive market, but its certainly capitalism.