he’s very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.

He's laying the case for why insurance must either operate as a public loss-leader or a privatized scam. But I don't think he really understands the bottom layer of the argument.

All I'm seeing is "Insurance is business. Business need to make money. Therefore denying claims is good aktuly." There's no "ah ha" bit at the end where he recognizes their predatory nature.

Do you guys think politicians have a duty to adhere to their campaign promises? They're not under oath. They have no responsibility to improve anyone's life. They're a business to win votes to alter policy in their favour.

Burger King doesn’t have to give you the whopper you’ve paid for.

The analogy breaks down because BK has an immediate cash-for-commodity relationship with the clients. If you had BK a $5 and they don't give you a sandwich, you stop going.

But insurance takes your $5 up front in exchange for assuming the risk that you might need care in the future. You keep giving UHC $5 day after day and week after week, receiving nothing tangible in exchange. It is only when the risk materializes, at the moment you need care, that you ask UHC for money back and they say "No".

This leads some people to advocate for health savings accounts as a replacement for private insurance. But then you have to deal with the possibility of a medical claim that exceeds your balance. So you get conversations about risk-pooling. But that just takes you back around to insurance companies again.

All of this is in an effort to discourage people from implementing public free-at-point-of-use health care (a la the NHS). The idea that we would simply have hospitals you can go to when you're sick, in the same way we have elementary schools to go to when you're young or fire departments to go to when you are on fire, is so totally alien to the hyper-individualist profit-fixated neoliberal capitalist that it never seems to come up in conversation.

As some who has no clue who Mike Beasley is, that seems like a perfectly legitimate Interpretation. A lot of people, like the one he is replying too, knowingly or not are defending the existing system and the existence of health insurances companies.

I mean, forget about health for a second: we all know insurance companies fucking suck, and they are essentially just a symptom of a shitty system. So why are we fighting/wishing/hoping for them to be run better/more empathetically instead of wanting a different system?

I think the his comment can be seen as a call-out of how some people are missing the root of the issue.

It's like all the media that think they are defending Brian Thompson by saying he was less horrible than the average healthcare CEO. Sometimes I wonder if they are making an argument for resurrecting the guillotine industry.

Oh, look, it's the guy who doesn't know what a meme is and insists on spamming it all the time

It’s a protection racket similar to the mob, except the mob has scruples and will actually protect you if you pay up. If you don’t pay up, broken kneecaps.

Health insurance is just paying for broken kneecaps. If the mob ran healthcare we’d have better outcomes than we currently do, let’s be real.

Loans pay out.