> Insurance companies are for-profit institutions Actually, some of the largest insurance companies and the vast majority of risk-bearing providers (hospitals

> Insurance companies are for-profit institutions Actually, some of the largest insurance companies and the vast majority of risk-bearing providers (hospitals that act as insurers) are non-profits. Though I never said that their pricing was based on charity; I said it was based on the fact that the product they offer is not really insurance (and that it exists in a marketplace in which prices are incredibly distorted by the existence of other factors, which would have been too long to explain in that simple example). > Claiming that "health insurance isn't really insurance, except in name"... is definitely non-mainstream On the contrary, that's the overwhelming consensus among economists. Which isn't surprising, because the economics of insurance are generally covered even at the undergraduate level, and the ways in which health insurance differs from a true insurance program are pretty glaring.