I would have to disagree you in a number of respects. The insurance companies have a rather large number of other products to market in addition to health insurance...casualty, e&o, Life , auto, etc. They already make massive profits as is exemplified by the size of the bonuses paid to their executives. They are very creative in coming up with ways to make a profit...much as are the credit card companies in creating new fees  in response to the change in their regulation...my favorite was a new fee to be charged for not using the credit card.

The only price control that I have heard built into the Senate bill is a 20% limitation on profit without any ceiling on premium. It leaves the insurance industry free to raise premiums at their discretion to maximize the 20% profit. At the same time the Senate bill will now require approximately 34,000,000 people to acquire health insurance with no ceiling on cost.

An analogy might be drawn to worker's comp insurance. It is an insurance that the insurance companies are required to provide, but not a money maker for them. I remember taking a deposition of an insurance agent several years ago, and hearing him complain to this. Somehow the insurance industry seems to have muddled through.

I do agree that some attention should be focused on the medical field requiring them to hold costs down...another shortcoming of the Senate bill. However, let us not forget that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have amassed fortunes at the expense of ill American citizens.

England, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and Scandinavia all have systems that work. Our current system simply exploits the human condition for profit to be made by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

I have posted about the Medicare Part B fiasco before, but perhaps it bears repeating. When the vote was to be made the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry went into overdrive. One congressman was getting ready to retire, and his son wanted to run for his seat. He was told that if he did not vote for the bill his son would not get the party nomination. Other sponsors of the bill went on to take lucrative jobs with the pharmaceutical industry after they left office. One of them was interviewed on 60 Minutes. When he was asked about this he came up with a rather lame explanation. He said that he felt a moral obligation to the pharmaceutical firm because it produced a drug that cured him of cancer. His huge annual salary played no part in his decision. I have a bit of difficulty in believing that.

Then there is the famous "donut hole". The bill provided for insurance coverage of the first $5,000 of prescription drug coverage for each year. After that the insured is required to cover the rest until the end of the year. I was standing in line at a pharmacy when I saw how this worked. The woman in front of me had exhausted her Donut Hole coverage, and could not afford to pay for her prescription. God only knows what becomes of cancer patients whose chemo therapy runs $20,000 per month.

Last of all let us not forget the prohibition built into the bill which prohibited Medicare from using using its superior buying power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs in the same manner as the Veteran's Association. When the prices paid by both systems were compared the difference was incredible.

Then we have the FDA's cozy association with the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry discovered that it was losing money when American citizens purchased their prescriptions on line from lower priced Canadian pharmacies. The pharmaceutical industry threatened to boycott the Canadian pharmacies. The FDA immediately jumped in to prohibit the practice because it allegedly would be too difficult to verify the quality of the prescriptions and regulate the practice. They were the same drugs produced by the same pharmaceutical firms in the U S....but at lower prices because Canada has price controls.

So, you will have to excuse my lack of concern for the lost profits of the insurance/pharmaceutical complex. I am more concerned with the quality of life than some insurance executive getting his $1,000,000 year end bonus.

You will have to excuse my lack of concern for the Insurance