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I agree with your opinions regarding violence. However I think the issue with insurance is when it becomes mandatory or defacto mandatory, because then you lose proper economic controls on the price via supply and demand. Demand for car insurance is artificially inflated by it being literally illegal to drive a vehicle without it. Demand for health insurance is artificially inflated by regulations requiring companies to provide it to employees, and tax penalties for private individuals who don't have any. Therefore, prices artificially inflate. (Similarly, healthcare prices are artificially inflated by regulations requiring severely limited-supply medical degrees).
Now, these regulations exist for reasons, but that doesn't undo the economic damage this causes to people. And then all the perverse incentives with their battles against healthcare providers and customers creates tons of paperwork and principal agent problems. I am wholeheartedly convinced that the existence of insurance companies and their role in our society is uniquely responsible for healthcare prices in the U.S. Now, this isn't necessarily the fault of the CEOs, it's really the politicians who created this niche, but I definitely understand the anger people have for them.
Theoretically insurance could be a useful and legitimate service. But that requires it be voluntary so that people can choose of their own free will whether they think it's worth the cost or not, which in turn forces companies to provide a product worth paying for. Just like with every other good and service. The current system is extortion with extra steps.
Failure to consume food is much more quickly and reliably fatal than failure to buy health insurance, and that market works fine. It just isn't true that supply and demand don't apply to necessities. I may have to buy food, but as long as I don't have to buy from you, you're not going to have much luck selling me potatoes for $10/pound.
The bigger problem is just that health care is really expensive. Supply constraints may play an important role here: The US just doesn't have enough doctors. Coverage mandates may be another issue. The government mandates coverage for treatment x, which adds $y to the premium. How many consumers, when fully informed, would a priori actually be willing to pay an extra $y per year for x to be covered?
Lack of price transparency is another issue. Lack of competition among insurers may be an issue, but insurer profit margins are pretty small, so it's likely a minor issue.
I think this is part of what I mean about it being mandatory. It's not just that the government forces you and/or employers to buy some sort of insurance, but also that insurance has to have certain properties, which if applied universally across all of them prevents competition by undercutting.
So perhaps the analogy would be if all foods sold must contain at least 2% caviar by weight. The store is going to sell potatoes for $10 per pound because they have to in order to cover the costs of the caviar that comes with it, and they can't be undercut because all the other stores have similar prices for the same reason. Maybe I decide to forgo potatoes and buy carrots instead, but those come with caviar too. It's only 2% of your diet, but it ends up being a much larger percent of your budget.
I do agree with your other points about things contributing to the cause. Lack of price transparency is also an issue (although the latter is tied to the role insurance companies paid, since they're the ones paying rather than customers, leading to principal agent problems). But if it was normal for the majority of people to not have health insurance then there would be strong pressures for more transparent prices and I think that issue would resolve itself.
Regulations requiring overly limited medical degrees is also an issue that this would not resolve. Although is similarly the government's fault.
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That's not true, at least in some states, like CA. You can post a self-insurance bond instead. Virtually nobody does that because for most people it doesn't make any financial sense.
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That scans. Private insurance is actually aligned with medical care becoming an ever bigger proportion of GDP. They want premiums to go up, so long as they all go up at the same time.
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