7 ms·

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enoug

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but his costs would go up. Is he complaining that he is on the wrong part of that tradeoff curve? Or does he expect low-cost insurance with a low deductible that covers all of his routine medical expenses?

kbos87 8y ago
It feels useless when you know that after paying in $500 a month for decades your insurance could be cancelled for making a claim.
- rayiner 8y ago
  It generally cannot.
  - xs83 8y ago
    Not yet....
  - foobiekr 8y ago
    It could be previously. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/07/why_you_cant_trust_your_health_insurer.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Yes, prior to the ACA, which included sweeping reforms to prevent this from happening.
      - fencepost 8y ago
        prior to the ACA Which the Trump administration and DOJ have now apparently chosen to actively target again, much to the apparent dismay of just about every Republican who has to run for election. The combination of a federal judge (Reed O'Connor in Texas) deciding that Congress does not in fact have the legal authority to revise legislation and the administration announcing that the DOJ will not be defending any aspect of the ACA whatsoever basically means that everything is in place to run it up through District, Circuit/Appellate and Supreme Court levels and kill it off.
        tptacek 8y ago
        As I said elsewhere on the thread, this rebuttal proves too much; unless you're really saying that it's structurally impossible due to the US Constitution or our unique culture to have decent health care, you'll have to do better than "anything the Democrats pass, the Republicans will try to repeal".
        fencepost 8y ago
        you'll have to do better than "anything the Democrats pass, the Republicans will try to repeal" It's not that, though there's some element of it in there. It's much more complex than that and I think a huge amount of it is driven by internal fractures within the Republican party even though legislatively they've seemingly been moving in lockstep. Without the branding most of the components of the ACA are or were fairly popular or at least understood/accepted by a big chunk of Republican voters (e.g. Kynect), but there's a big enough subset that are opposed to make the politics within the party such that anyone voicing approval couldn't get enough votes to remain in office. The long-term impact is that killing off the compromise system that is the ACA is going to make it more likely that the USA will go to some form of single-payer or hybrid system with a single-payer level and private insurance for extended options (much like Medicare + Medigap). I think if the Republicans had succeeded in killing it off in 2017 we'd probably be looking at something like Medicare expansion starting around 2023, if they do it now I'd figure that might still be the case but it may be extended out to 2025 for the starting point. Whether it's something completely new or simply an expansion of "You can buy into Medicare" to ever-earlier ages is too soon to tell.
usaphp 8y ago
Imagine a regular sized family of 4, you have to shell out more than $20K/year for the most basic health insurance for your family if you are self employed, $20,000! and you still have to pay for EVERY doctor visit for your kids and regular checkups, and your family deductible is around $10-12K. And every year they send you a new increased quote by 10-15%. There should be some kind of a discount for families, like when you have multiple cars under your insurance your rate barely goes up when you add another one.
- veryworried 8y ago
  Eh, with cars you can only be driving one at a time so it doesn't make sense for insurance to double or triple just because you now have two or three cars. With family members, they are all absolutely living in parallel and at the same time.
  - EvanAnderson 8y ago
    I've owned 5 cars at one point, and dropping or adding cars never changed the amount of the premium attributed to the other cars. (That is to say adding car 5 was an increase similar to adding car 4, for example.) I never understood why, seeing as how I can only drive one at a time, but I've always just assumed this is customary.
    - veryworried 8y ago
      Maybe I’m daft but it seems like the premium is for cases of theft or damage not caused by driving. Seems pretty clear to me.
- cbsks 8y ago
  In my expensive area of CA, a gold insurance plan for a family of 4 costs $20,400 per year. That’s an insurance plan with a $0 deductible and $30 co-pay per doctor visit. That is far from the most basic health plan. A plan with a $12k deductible is $13,500 per year. Even so, a $20k a year is peanuts compared to the out-of-pocket expenses of a serious medical emergency. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking insurance is not with it just because you haven’t had to use it yet.
atomical 8y ago
His insurance sucks. We don't need to look at a chart to realize that. I have a low deductible and I pay under $100/mo.
- milemi 8y ago
  Where do you live, and how far are you from 40?
peteretep 8y ago
When compared to health insurance almost anywhere else in the world, it's dire value for money.
- wincy 8y ago
  It’s pretty good for my daughter. She was born with Spina Bifida and we’re paying $300 a month for an ACA plan. She’s cost probably a million dollars by this point so it’s worked out pretty well for us. In a country with socialized medicine they’d probably have just let her die, as the doctors had given her a prognosis that she might not last a year. My wife dug up some research on some treatments they hadn’t considered, and now our daughter’s condition is greatly improved, and her prognosis adjusted to slightly below average lifespan (Spina Bifida adults have kidney problems because they often have to catheter themselves and suffer long term backing up into the kidneys, which eventually causes kidney failure). It’s a weird case too because if she gets the care she needs she stands to live a long life, be of normal intelligence, she has a good chance of walking, etc. She’s so darned cute and gregarious, cooing and laughing, you’d never know she had all these problems if you saw her out and about. So I guess my daughter is the reason insurance is so expensive. But after getting page after page of “100% covered $3000” pages for each day she’s spent in the hospital, I’m really glad to have the insurance I do, because a place where the government decides how much to spend on care would have given up on her months ago.
  - rswail 8y ago
    In a "country with socialized medicine" that is in the 1st world (ie US/CA/UK/AU/NZ/EU etc) she'd probably get exactly the same treatments. Oh and the cost of that hospital room would have been literally a tenth of the cost. I (or my insurance) wasn't charged half of that for a post-operative 48 hours in an ICU after quad bypass surgery. The US already has a third of its population covered by "socialized medicine". That's what Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare /VA are. The "socialized" adjective is a canard introduced by the health care "industry" in the US to scare people. US Medicare admin costs are below 5% pa, the health insurance "industry" doing the same thing, are 20% of their revenue.
    - 8y ago
risaacs99 8y ago
Yeah the negativity struck me as well. After being in Afib for a month, he was at high risk for having a stroke. I guarantee you that insurance would have been appreciated then. Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.
- goshx 8y ago
  It seems to me that only people who were born in the US "appreciate" paying this much money for health insurance and see someone criticizing it as being negative. The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high. Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Many countries rely on privately-managed health insurers (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.). > Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts. Dictating what treatments you can and cannot have is how health systems all over the world control costs. Many systems do this much more aggressively than in the U.S. The U.K. NHS, for example, will only spend about 20-30,000 pounds per "quality-adjusted life year," or about double that for end-of-life drugs. In the U.S., it is routine to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a couple of extra years. (The historic practice in the U.S. was to have lifetime limits--typically in the several million dollar range, but even those are illegal under the ACA.)
xs83 8y ago
I honestly find this baffling that there is a "limit" on how much treatment you can have done based on an arbitrary $ cost. Australia generally has great "free" healthcare but even then it is complicated with rebates and gaps etc, its not completely "free" but there isn't exactly a limit on what you can have done under Medicare. If you have private medical insurance (an option not a requirement) then you can get a nicer hospital and not pay for the extra requirements. In the UK you just get fixed and never see a bill in your life - everyones tax pays for it. Again not exactly "free" but you don't "pay" for it. Again, if you have private you can get a better hospital, choose your doctor etc. The way I see it the US could 'have its cake and eat it' but there is significant opposition to anything that seems "Socialist" because the moguls who run these private health insurance companies are making too much money to change the system.
- dis-sys 8y ago
  > Australia generally has great "free" healthcare No, the Australian medicare system is not remotely close to being great. When a simple CT scan/MRI can take 4 months waiting time [1], I wouldn't jump up and defend such a failed system. It is not great, it is the complete opposite of that. Ever tried to do some dentals using that "free" healthcare you mentioned or ever tried 12-18 months elective surgery waiting time? [1] https://www.2gb.com/hospital-waiting-times-for-crucial-surgery-clearly-not-acceptable-says-nsw-health/ https://www.2gb.com/hospital-waiting-times-for-crucial-surge...
  - rswail 8y ago
    OK, so this is Australia's system (from patient's perspective). I'm a T2 diabetic, obese, 55, have had one heart attack, angiogram/stent, second angiogram, quad bypass: 0. Everyone pays a 1.5% "extra" tax for Medicare, but that's actually just a cover. The actual cost to government is much higher, but is paid out of general revenue. 1. GPs and specialists are reimbursed by the government at a govt decided rate for different procedures. 2. The GPs/specialists can "bulk bill" in which case patients don't pay, or there is a "gap" that has to be paid by the patient. The gap cannot be covered by insurance (by law). 3. Medicines that are approved by an independent body are subsidized on the Pharmaceutical Benefits System (PBS). Once on that list (and most meds are), the cost to the patient is $35 for a prescription, subsidized to $6 for those on welfare. My meds (statin, beta blocker, ACE inhibitor, metformin etc) cost me about $100/month. 4. Public hospitals are free at point of use by patients. This includes all ER, surgery etc. However, because this is a limited resource, there are waiting lists for different procedures, managed based on urgency. If I'd gone to a public hospital ER for my heart attack, the treatment would have been as quick and as good as what I got when I went to a private hospital ER. Oh, except that the private ER cost me $400. 5. Private insurance is available. For me, the insurance costs $300/month (ie, $3600 pa). This allows me to use private hospitals within a wide network (with a $400/per admittance excess), ancilliary benefits like optical ($200 pa) etc. It also allows me the choice of specialist/surgeons in hospital and things like private rooms. It may not be "great", but compared to the US it's much much better. There are no/zero/nada cases of "medical bankruptcy" here. ER costs are not in the thousands, bills aren't ridiculous, my entire treatment regime over 2 years and 2 admittals to hospital cost me less than $10K because I chose my cardiologist and surgeon. If I'd gone "public", the cost would have been $0. Our public hospitals are the "teaching hospitals" and our medical research and results are world leading. Our GPs are primarily focussed on care and patient outcomes, they now spend a lot of time as case managers, for example, my T2 care plan is managed by my GP but involves a dietician, an endocrenologist etc.
dis-sys 8y ago
> he is generally in excellent health with heart rate in 120 bpm? to me that is the pretty opposite of "excellent health".
ken 8y ago
I'm not the author, but I pay out of pocket for my health insurance, too. To answer one of your other questions: I don't own a home. I drive an old (and thus, inexpensive to replace) car. To save money, I have the highest deductible offered by my insurance company. That ensures that when something small happens, unless it affects drivability, I'm not going to fix it. The value I see that I get out of car insurance (besides the legal requirement) is its health insurance, e.g., if I get in a crash and need $50K for emergency surgery, or if I get in a wreck with another driver who was (illegally) driving without insurance and they needed surgery. In other words, apart from the health insurance aspect (which should be single-payer anyway), yes, I think car insurance is pretty much useless for me. I understand why governments institute requirements like this -- it's a systems-thinking solution which is probably better than not having it -- but pretty much by definition any private insurance system is going to be a financial loser for a lot of people. I don't have to pay to insure my money -- the bank pays the FDIC from my capital. It seems weird to me that I have to pay for personal insurance at all. Why don't fuel taxes and license fees provide for auto insurance? Why doesn't federal income tax provide for health insurance? Various other countries do these and they seem to work fine. Yeah, I know: politics.

kbos87 8y ago

It feels useless when you know that after paying in $500 a month for decades your insurance could be cancelled for making a claim.

rayiner 8y ago
It generally cannot.
- xs83 8y ago
  Not yet....
- foobiekr 8y ago
  It could be previously. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/07/why_you_cant_trust_your_health_insurer.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Yes, prior to the ACA, which included sweeping reforms to prevent this from happening.
    - fencepost 8y ago
      prior to the ACA Which the Trump administration and DOJ have now apparently chosen to actively target again, much to the apparent dismay of just about every Republican who has to run for election. The combination of a federal judge (Reed O'Connor in Texas) deciding that Congress does not in fact have the legal authority to revise legislation and the administration announcing that the DOJ will not be defending any aspect of the ACA whatsoever basically means that everything is in place to run it up through District, Circuit/Appellate and Supreme Court levels and kill it off.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        As I said elsewhere on the thread, this rebuttal proves too much; unless you're really saying that it's structurally impossible due to the US Constitution or our unique culture to have decent health care, you'll have to do better than "anything the Democrats pass, the Republicans will try to repeal".
        fencepost 8y ago
        you'll have to do better than "anything the Democrats pass, the Republicans will try to repeal" It's not that, though there's some element of it in there. It's much more complex than that and I think a huge amount of it is driven by internal fractures within the Republican party even though legislatively they've seemingly been moving in lockstep. Without the branding most of the components of the ACA are or were fairly popular or at least understood/accepted by a big chunk of Republican voters (e.g. Kynect), but there's a big enough subset that are opposed to make the politics within the party such that anyone voicing approval couldn't get enough votes to remain in office. The long-term impact is that killing off the compromise system that is the ACA is going to make it more likely that the USA will go to some form of single-payer or hybrid system with a single-payer level and private insurance for extended options (much like Medicare + Medigap). I think if the Republicans had succeeded in killing it off in 2017 we'd probably be looking at something like Medicare expansion starting around 2023, if they do it now I'd figure that might still be the case but it may be extended out to 2025 for the starting point. Whether it's something completely new or simply an expansion of "You can buy into Medicare" to ever-earlier ages is too soon to tell.

usaphp 8y ago

Imagine a regular sized family of 4, you have to shell out more than $20K/year for the most basic health insurance for your family if you are self employed, $20,000! and you still have to pay for EVERY doctor visit for your kids and regular checkups, and your family deductible is around $10-12K. And every year they send you a new increased quote by 10-15%. There should be some kind of a discount for families, like when you have multiple cars under your insurance your rate barely goes up when you add another one.

veryworried 8y ago
Eh, with cars you can only be driving one at a time so it doesn't make sense for insurance to double or triple just because you now have two or three cars. With family members, they are all absolutely living in parallel and at the same time.
- EvanAnderson 8y ago
  I've owned 5 cars at one point, and dropping or adding cars never changed the amount of the premium attributed to the other cars. (That is to say adding car 5 was an increase similar to adding car 4, for example.) I never understood why, seeing as how I can only drive one at a time, but I've always just assumed this is customary.
  - veryworried 8y ago
    Maybe I’m daft but it seems like the premium is for cases of theft or damage not caused by driving. Seems pretty clear to me.
cbsks 8y ago
In my expensive area of CA, a gold insurance plan for a family of 4 costs $20,400 per year. That’s an insurance plan with a $0 deductible and $30 co-pay per doctor visit. That is far from the most basic health plan. A plan with a $12k deductible is $13,500 per year. Even so, a $20k a year is peanuts compared to the out-of-pocket expenses of a serious medical emergency. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking insurance is not with it just because you haven’t had to use it yet.

atomical 8y ago

His insurance sucks. We don't need to look at a chart to realize that. I have a low deductible and I pay under $100/mo.

milemi 8y ago
Where do you live, and how far are you from 40?

peteretep 8y ago

When compared to health insurance almost anywhere else in the world, it's dire value for money.

wincy 8y ago
It’s pretty good for my daughter. She was born with Spina Bifida and we’re paying $300 a month for an ACA plan. She’s cost probably a million dollars by this point so it’s worked out pretty well for us. In a country with socialized medicine they’d probably have just let her die, as the doctors had given her a prognosis that she might not last a year. My wife dug up some research on some treatments they hadn’t considered, and now our daughter’s condition is greatly improved, and her prognosis adjusted to slightly below average lifespan (Spina Bifida adults have kidney problems because they often have to catheter themselves and suffer long term backing up into the kidneys, which eventually causes kidney failure). It’s a weird case too because if she gets the care she needs she stands to live a long life, be of normal intelligence, she has a good chance of walking, etc. She’s so darned cute and gregarious, cooing and laughing, you’d never know she had all these problems if you saw her out and about. So I guess my daughter is the reason insurance is so expensive. But after getting page after page of “100% covered $3000” pages for each day she’s spent in the hospital, I’m really glad to have the insurance I do, because a place where the government decides how much to spend on care would have given up on her months ago.
- rswail 8y ago
  In a "country with socialized medicine" that is in the 1st world (ie US/CA/UK/AU/NZ/EU etc) she'd probably get exactly the same treatments. Oh and the cost of that hospital room would have been literally a tenth of the cost. I (or my insurance) wasn't charged half of that for a post-operative 48 hours in an ICU after quad bypass surgery. The US already has a third of its population covered by "socialized medicine". That's what Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare /VA are. The "socialized" adjective is a canard introduced by the health care "industry" in the US to scare people. US Medicare admin costs are below 5% pa, the health insurance "industry" doing the same thing, are 20% of their revenue.
  - 8y ago

risaacs99 8y ago

Yeah the negativity struck me as well. After being in Afib for a month, he was at high risk for having a stroke. I guarantee you that insurance would have been appreciated then. Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.

goshx 8y ago
It seems to me that only people who were born in the US "appreciate" paying this much money for health insurance and see someone criticizing it as being negative. The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high. Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Many countries rely on privately-managed health insurers (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.). > Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts. Dictating what treatments you can and cannot have is how health systems all over the world control costs. Many systems do this much more aggressively than in the U.S. The U.K. NHS, for example, will only spend about 20-30,000 pounds per "quality-adjusted life year," or about double that for end-of-life drugs. In the U.S., it is routine to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a couple of extra years. (The historic practice in the U.S. was to have lifetime limits--typically in the several million dollar range, but even those are illegal under the ACA.)

xs83 8y ago

I honestly find this baffling that there is a "limit" on how much treatment you can have done based on an arbitrary $ cost. Australia generally has great "free" healthcare but even then it is complicated with rebates and gaps etc, its not completely "free" but there isn't exactly a limit on what you can have done under Medicare. If you have private medical insurance (an option not a requirement) then you can get a nicer hospital and not pay for the extra requirements. In the UK you just get fixed and never see a bill in your life - everyones tax pays for it. Again not exactly "free" but you don't "pay" for it. Again, if you have private you can get a better hospital, choose your doctor etc. The way I see it the US could 'have its cake and eat it' but there is significant opposition to anything that seems "Socialist" because the moguls who run these private health insurance companies are making too much money to change the system.

dis-sys 8y ago
> Australia generally has great "free" healthcare No, the Australian medicare system is not remotely close to being great. When a simple CT scan/MRI can take 4 months waiting time [1], I wouldn't jump up and defend such a failed system. It is not great, it is the complete opposite of that. Ever tried to do some dentals using that "free" healthcare you mentioned or ever tried 12-18 months elective surgery waiting time? [1] https://www.2gb.com/hospital-waiting-times-for-crucial-surgery-clearly-not-acceptable-says-nsw-health/ https://www.2gb.com/hospital-waiting-times-for-crucial-surge...
- rswail 8y ago
  OK, so this is Australia's system (from patient's perspective). I'm a T2 diabetic, obese, 55, have had one heart attack, angiogram/stent, second angiogram, quad bypass: 0. Everyone pays a 1.5% "extra" tax for Medicare, but that's actually just a cover. The actual cost to government is much higher, but is paid out of general revenue. 1. GPs and specialists are reimbursed by the government at a govt decided rate for different procedures. 2. The GPs/specialists can "bulk bill" in which case patients don't pay, or there is a "gap" that has to be paid by the patient. The gap cannot be covered by insurance (by law). 3. Medicines that are approved by an independent body are subsidized on the Pharmaceutical Benefits System (PBS). Once on that list (and most meds are), the cost to the patient is $35 for a prescription, subsidized to $6 for those on welfare. My meds (statin, beta blocker, ACE inhibitor, metformin etc) cost me about $100/month. 4. Public hospitals are free at point of use by patients. This includes all ER, surgery etc. However, because this is a limited resource, there are waiting lists for different procedures, managed based on urgency. If I'd gone to a public hospital ER for my heart attack, the treatment would have been as quick and as good as what I got when I went to a private hospital ER. Oh, except that the private ER cost me $400. 5. Private insurance is available. For me, the insurance costs $300/month (ie, $3600 pa). This allows me to use private hospitals within a wide network (with a $400/per admittance excess), ancilliary benefits like optical ($200 pa) etc. It also allows me the choice of specialist/surgeons in hospital and things like private rooms. It may not be "great", but compared to the US it's much much better. There are no/zero/nada cases of "medical bankruptcy" here. ER costs are not in the thousands, bills aren't ridiculous, my entire treatment regime over 2 years and 2 admittals to hospital cost me less than $10K because I chose my cardiologist and surgeon. If I'd gone "public", the cost would have been $0. Our public hospitals are the "teaching hospitals" and our medical research and results are world leading. Our GPs are primarily focussed on care and patient outcomes, they now spend a lot of time as case managers, for example, my T2 care plan is managed by my GP but involves a dietician, an endocrenologist etc.

dis-sys 8y ago

> he is generally in excellent health with heart rate in 120 bpm? to me that is the pretty opposite of "excellent health".

ken 8y ago

I'm not the author, but I pay out of pocket for my health insurance, too. To answer one of your other questions: I don't own a home. I drive an old (and thus, inexpensive to replace) car. To save money, I have the highest deductible offered by my insurance company. That ensures that when something small happens, unless it affects drivability, I'm not going to fix it. The value I see that I get out of car insurance (besides the legal requirement) is its health insurance, e.g., if I get in a crash and need $50K for emergency surgery, or if I get in a wreck with another driver who was (illegally) driving without insurance and they needed surgery. In other words, apart from the health insurance aspect (which should be single-payer anyway), yes, I think car insurance is pretty much useless for me. I understand why governments institute requirements like this -- it's a systems-thinking solution which is probably better than not having it -- but pretty much by definition any private insurance system is going to be a financial loser for a lot of people. I don't have to pay to insure my money -- the bank pays the FDIC from my capital. It seems weird to me that I have to pay for personal insurance at all. Why don't fuel taxes and license fees provide for auto insurance? Why doesn't federal income tax provide for health insurance? Various other countries do these and they seem to work fine. Yeah, I know: politics.