The insurance companies have decided to turn on Obama and oppose health care insurance reform as proposed in the Senate Finance Committee.

After months of collaboration on President Obama’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected.

Color me surprised. In this country, with private healthcare we spend more than any other country in “overhead” costs for healthcare. This overhead includes the salaries of those private companies in handling the payments, as well as the high salaries of their management. Here is a comparison:

Medicare, the publicly managed plan for the elderly in the United States, spends 5 percent of each health care dollar on administrative expenses, compared with the 17 percent devoured by private insurers on average.