Is this something you want?

Yes. The business of insurance is immoral and causes irreparable harm to our country.

Explain. Give me a list of reasons why you believe this, and don't hesitate to dive into the detail as to why each reason needs to be included.

Insurance started innocently enough: covering things that were unpredictable and random. Compile statistics, figure rates, pay out if someone got unlucky and collect from the lucky to cover that cost. Because the chances of payout were relatively low, the incentive to deny payment was low and the system (more or less) worked.

But even then there always existed the simple fact that the system is inherently abusable - if the insurer can find an excuse not to pay out, they garner far more profit than if they just run the business as intended. The system itself encourages abuse, and it should be thus unsurprising that the system ended up being abused.

Nowadays, insurance is being abused all over the place. Insurance is being used to cover inevitabilities (death, health care, ageing), for which the only possible return is to deny as much payout as possible. Insurance is run by publicly traded companies, further incentivising denial in pursuit of the mistaken "mandate" for "higher profits". Insurance has long ceased to be protection against accident and become a game of cat and mouse, with the consumer playing mouse to gun-wielding cats.

Insurance simply doesn't work; there's far too much incentive for companies to cheat it, and far too little recourse for consumers to stop them.

Good lord FB, I've never agreed with you more than with that little rundown on the immorality of insurance. The whole system makes me want to take a shower of shame.

Of course, I believe that the health of the individuals who make up a nation should be covered by the nation, as those individuals are a pretty essential resource for the nation to actually BE a nation in the first place. And so we should all be paying, in the form of taxes, for the health of our neighbors. And no one should profit off the health of our neighbors.

I suppose that means I'm a socialist.

Do you think that insurance on matters that are not debateable is okay? Like, flood insurance that pays out based on the high water line alone.

That will just lead to insurance companies wrangling over either what high water line necessitates a payout or arguing over the measured line itself.

So then you think there should be no form of risk transfer available to anyone?

No postal insurance? Mail it you want but if it gets lost, too bad for you...

No property insurance? Better not buy a house unless you have enough money to rebuild if it burns down, while still paying the mortgage you owe the bank. For that matter, I suppose there's no mortgage insurance, so even if the house doesn't burn down you better not ever get hurt or lose your job...

Of course, no insurance also means no extended warranties...

Insurance is both valuable and important. Without it, every form of economic activity has to be backed up with a reserve large enough to cover the capital costs of rebuilding from scratch. Almost no one can afford that; without insurance there's quite possibly no economy at all beyond the "mom and pop" level because the risks are just too high.

The problem with "health insurance" is that it isn't insurance.

Get all insurance to be non-profit and I might agree to its continued existence. For-profit insurance puts incentives in the wrong places.

I've always figured that some forms of insurance are a necessity while most other forms are simply excess baggage we'd all be better off without. I'm in equal parts agreeing with both FreakBoy and OldCrow.

This:

I have simply never seen you be so obviously right about anything. Dayyum.

Blue Cross in Michigan is non profit, but they still do a lot of the same things that the for profit insurers do. I would rather they do away with medical insurance all together.

I did only say might. I'm not sure removing the profit motive is enough to fix the system, but I would be willing to entertain the idea if pressed.

Also - are you sure Blue Cross is still non-profit in MI? A lot of the other Blue Crosses went for-profit about twenty years ago.

still non profit. Although I will say they are probably the best provider in Michigan.