Health insurance companies recruit providers (hospitals and physicians), negotiate prices for services, manage patient records and billing, detect, prevent, and

Health insurance companies recruit providers (hospitals and physicians), negotiate prices for services, manage patient records and billing, detect, prevent, and prosecute provider fraud, determine market prices based on their predicted population of insured live, and other random tasks. It's a stretch to call this no value add, in my opinion. We can, and should, compare the efficiency of medicare administration to private insurance administration, and study the best practices of each system. Even in countries with state-sponsored universal healthcare, like the UK, there are robust private health insurance systems, which indicates to me that they offer value to consumers and fill some market need.