Veddy veddy interesting post over at TPMMuckraker about the unfolding health-care debate, and a report issued in May by the reform group Health Care for America Now, which - using American Medical Association data - determined that:

94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated,” according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that’s led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

And why  might this be? As the Pennsylvania portion of the report notes:

The state’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross control 72 percent of Pennsylvania’s market for commercial health insurance.

Well, monopolies are usually profitable, aren’t they?

As noted by TPM, it’s important to keep this in mind as the debate plows forward, and we hear all about how the “public option” means the public won’t benefit from the competition amongst health insurers that prompts innovation and drives down prices.

The realtiy is, there is no competition. The public opion - under a different name, with less of a profit motive - may merely continue what the insurance companies themselves have already instituted.