>"This is a pretty wild straw man fallacy, but I'd like to give a good faith response nonetheless." Your interlocutor was actually using "reductio ad absurdum"

>"This is a pretty wild straw man fallacy, but I'd like to give a good faith response nonetheless." Your interlocutor was actually using "reductio ad absurdum", which is a valid style of argumentation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum You didn't address the scenario as presented, or demonstrate how it violated a principle you had described. Instead, you shifted to excoriating the insurers for greed and waste. Should the insurance company bankrupt itself on the first client? If not, how should they decide how much to spend on each? I should note that non-profit hospitals have similar results as for-profit hospitals (in the USA), so there's little evidence of shareholder greed playing a significant role (though there are many other stakeholders including employees).