On his blog this week, Merrill Goozner reflected on a Wall Street Journal story headlined "Oil Hits a Gusher." The story had an interesting bar chart that showed that fourth quarter profits for U.S.-based oil companies rose a stunning 66.4 percent over a year ago, and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the entire $20 billion increase for all corporations.
But Goozner writes that "what also caught my eye was the other really long bar in the Journal chart. Health care corporations increased their profits in the same quarter by 68.5 percent -- two full percentage points more than Big Oil! And that accounted for another 30 percent of the increase in total corporate profits in the fourth quarter. In other words, Big Oil and Big Health got it all (utilities accounted for most of the rest)."
Yet the U.S. has 45-million people without health insurance, and an administration trumpeting the merits of a market-driven solution to health care (disingenuously marketed as a "consumer-driven" solution!). Americans, who have already been told they are "addicted to oil, " clearly can't afford to also be addicted to health care.
Posted by schwitz at February 17, 2006 08:53 AM | TrackBack