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

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.