The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there are a handful insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers.. but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!
— George Carlin
Spectacular Insurance Companies quotations
Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That's what I want to know.
Markets are as old as the crossroads.
But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping.
Physically you are a human being, but mentally you are incomplete.
Given that we have this physical human form, we must safeguard our mental capacity for judgment. For that, we cannot take out insurance; the insurance company is within: self-discipline, self-awareness, and a clear realization of the disadvantages of anger and the positive effects of kindness.
I will never turn Medicare into a voucher.
No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned.
If we are enforcing what should be the rules around Medicare and making sure the people are getting the bang for the buck, it's not going to be possible for insurance companies to simply pass on those costs to Medicare recipients, because ultimately it's Uncle Sam that's paying for those services anyway.
Insurance companies, drug companies are going to have to be ponying up, partly because right now they're receiving huge subsidies.
I am here for my mother and all the Americans who are forced to spend time arguing with health insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well. I am here for the millions of lives that will be touched and in some cases, saved, by health insurance reform. I am here for the small businesses who are forced to choose between health care and hiring. I am here for the seniors who are unable to afford the prescriptions they need.
We're going to stand with working people.
We're going to take on the billionaire class. We're going the take on the drug companies and the insurance companies. We're going the take on Wall Street. That's where I think the future of the Democratic Party lies.
You cannot be a party which takes money from Wall Street, which is not strong on the pharmaceutical industry, which is ripping us off every day, which is not strong on health care in taking on the insurance companies, which has not shown a desire to stand up and fight the economic establishment, and then tell working families that you are on their side. People see through that.
I have taken on virtually every element of the big money establishment, whether it's the Koch brothers, and the big energy companies, whether it's the industrial complex, whether it's Wall Street... I have taken on the drug companies. I have taken on the insurance companies.
People don't trust private health insurance companies for all the right reasons.
AIG would be doing fine today. It was one of the ten largest companies in the United States in terms of market value, over 200 billion, the most respected insurer and everything in the world.
You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies.
You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map. You may find local companies that have nothing wrong with them at all. A company that I found, Western Insurance Securities, was trading for $3/share when it was earning $20/share!! I tried to buy up as much of it as possible. No one will tell you about these businesses. You have to find them.
If insurance companies paid for lifestyle-management classes, they would save huge sums of money. We need to see that alternative medicine is now mainstream.
"Value added" is a meaningless concept for a retail business , for a bank, for a life insurance company, and for any other business which is not primarily engaged in manufacturing.
Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.
Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well.
The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success . . . . Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to 'keep insurance companies honest' - and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest.
Obamacare is dead. Obamacare right now, all the insurance companies are fleeing. Places like Tennessee have already lost half of their state with the insurance companies. They're all going. Obamacare, John, is dead. Okay, because we're being - we're being compared to Obamacare. Just, so. Obamacare doesn't work.
Obamacare is collapsing. It's dead. It's gone. There's nothing to compare anything to because we don't have health care in this country. You just look at what's happening. Aetna just pulled out. Other insurance companies are pulling out. We don't have health care. Obamacare is a fallacy. It's gone.
We're going to have a lot of different options.
Right now you have no options. You know why? Because the insurance company controlled Obama because they gave him a lot of money. That's why you have lines around the states. And you can't get competitive bidding.
What I'd like to see is a private [healthcare] system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I'm negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians.
The only people who become wealthy by being concerned with the future are insurance companies.
I had a job interview at an insurance company once, and the lady said 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' I said, 'Celebrating the fifth year anniversary of you asking me this question!'
I'm getting so old my insurance company sends me 1/2 a calendar!
Why is it that private insurance companies are not in trouble because people are getting older? Aren't they subject to the same demographics? The difference is that they've accumulated a fund, not a pay-in, pay-out system.
Let's fix what's broken about Obamacare, but let's not throw it away and give it all back to the insurance companies and the drug companies.
In most of the USA, the three largest health insurance companies in each state control 80 percent of the market. No wonder premiums are going up.
I want to go further, because it was investment banks, it was insurance companies, it was mortgage companies, all of which contributed.So let's not just be narrowly focused on one part of the problem. We have a lot of issues with corporate power that have to be addressed. My plan takes us further and it would do the job.
When I took on the drug companies and the insurance companies for universal health care coverage, they went after me with a vengeance.
When I'm buying car insurance I ask myself, 'Which company has the most annoying and relentless commercials?'
I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.
Women tend to need the healthcare system more because we bear children.
Insurance companies - not all of them, but many of them - 'gender-rate.' Women may pay 40% more for their health insurance than men do.
In the U.S. for instance, the value of a homemaker's productive work has been imputed mostly when she was maimed or killed and insurance companies and/or the courts had to calculate the amount to pay her family in damages. Even at that, the rates were mostly pink collar and the big number was attributed to the husband's pain and suffering.
[On gender-rating by insurance companies:] They say the reason they get to charge more is we have children. I would say having children is a socially useful act. Being female is not a preexisting condition.
Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.
Why should insurance companies continue to get away with limiting the skills that a health profession has always previously required of its members if they were to be considered fully trained?
Good presidents, people like George Bush, they SEND people to war.
They don't bring them a rescue. This is America. We rescue insurance companies and banks.
Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.
This is sort of the epitome of the economic elite that is converging with a political elite. It's not only the banks and insurance companies. It's the war industry and private prisons. Certainly the fossil fuel agencies. It's not only that they're supporting this campaign, they're supporters of the Clinton Foundation. And where the Clinton Foundation ends and Hillary's [Clinton] political actions begin, that too is quite troubling.
I have the unique liberty as part of the Green Party that operates on the same terms. We have the ability to actually speak for everyday Americans. We are not controlled by major donors, by the influence of big banks, by fossil fuel giants, by war profiteers or insurance companies.
This is very dangerous for us, as a society, and I think people deserve a politics of integrity that is not bought and paid for by big banks, fossil fuel giants, war profiteers, insurance companies, the things that those two corporate parties both represent and which pull the strings inside the party.
While she [Hillary Clinton] may have a - give lip service to progressive issues, she led the charge, and there she definitely did, in Haiti, to push down the minimum wage from 60 cents an hour down to 40 cents an hour. She, you know, has been the good friend of the big banks forever, and the insurance companies.
How come liberals never admit that they're liberal? They've now come up with a new word called 'progressive,' which I thought was an insurance company but apparently it's a label.
The gang that trashed the town was now back in town to trash it even more and you'll never guess.. they decided that the only way to save an economy brought to its knees by their collective actions and the banking system they represent was to, well, no, surely not.. hand trillions of taxpayer-borrowed dollars to the Rothschild-controlled banks and insurance companies like CitiGroup, J. P. Morgan, AIG and a long list of others.