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This guy worked for an insurance corporation that had like an 8-9% net margin. That’s not exploitative. That’s not greed on a grand scale. The US public consistently rejected single payer at the ballot box. They are frustrated with the current system, but cannot propose an alternative upon which most can agree.
And you ask, How magnanimous is Lockheed-Martin? I tell you yea, they profit one cent off the dollar when Hellfire smites an apostate's wedding.
I recognize the necessity of health insurance, I endorse it verbatim as part of the bulwark against single-payer. I understand they have to make hard decisions, because healthcare is triage, and when resource allocation literally is life-and-death, cold calculation is required. This makes it better, it does not make it good. While I'm at it I guess I also should clarify that I see no good in a man being murdered in the street. This may cause deaths downstream, I assume no one's taking that CEO role now without United providing private security, that cost, likely trivial as it is, may be pushed on the consumer, so a rise in rates or claims denied and both lead to reduced life outcomes and death. On the other hand if it causes them to approve claims they otherwise wouldn't, we might see life downstream of this, but I'm not saying let us do evil that good may result. It was murder, and his condemnation will be just. I only plea to history in what constitutes "prosocial" behavior: Thompson was a plebeian who made himself a patrician, and civilization continued all the same through those periods where noblemen who profited from commoners' deaths still feared earthly vengeance.
It doesn't matter if it's 8%, the misdeed is not meted off the margin.
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I think it's not exactly useful to gauge a company's level of "greed" by its profit margin, particularly these huge companies. They are not tight ships running as lean as possible: they inevitably swell with thousands of useless, well-paid employees. Not to mention well-paid executives. These firms love to tighten the screws on their clients in order to avoid cutting the fat.
And of course using this as your proxy will make out better-run companies as being "greedy", and poorly-run ones saints.
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