[myamoto1]

John, I agree that $0.96 - $0.97 of every dollar isn't being paid out in claims. Like The Gaijin said, I'm not sure that 16% is going into overhead across the board. I've done a ton of searching and can only find medical-benefit ratio (medical-loss ratio) stats for the "big 5" which are the greedy bastards I eluded to earlier. The MBR for those companies is closer to 80%. I also wasn't able to find any stats on what percentage of the market the big 5 had, so it's hard to determine if that can be applied across the industry or just the top earners. I also don't think the stats being thrown around include the balance provided by the non-profit insurance companies, and there are quite a few of those.

The problem we're facing now is accuracy of data. With HC being such a hot topic, it's nearly impossible to find data that hasn't been slanted one way or the other. Until I can find more unbiased data, I will say that I don't know enough to be certain in anything other than your data isn't accurate. Actually, let me clarify - It's accurate under the parameters in which it was created, not in how it's being used to "benchmark" the industry.