There's a substantial difference between something like automobile, homeowners, or renter's insurance; and health care "insurance" which is arguably wrongly named.
Automobile insurance is mandated by law in all 50 states (Maine lets you self insure but you have to stipulate you can do this, in effect it's still a mandate). Homeowner's insurance isn't required by law but might be required by the mortgage company. And renter's insurance may be required by a landlord. All of these only protect you against almost random events, or at least pretty much unpredictable events.
Health care insurance is weighted by being one part warranty and two parts aging payment plan. How many people use their health insurance every single year in some form or another? Dental? Eye doctor? Cold or flu? That's not insurance. It's a payment plan for predictable services. Even pregnancy is predictable. Something like cancer, congenital disease, are not predictable. So we've conflated a bunch of things into a giant payment plan, with nearly a dozen layers of middle men, every one of whom expects a profit cut. And so in the U.S. we have the most expensive per capita health care cost in the industrialized world, and yet not everyone is covered. Basically we are so stupid, that we are willing to pay more for health care services to deny other people being covered, and to jack ourselves off proudly that this is the best health care system in the world and it's (mostly) free market. It's a big fat stupid hand job.
So I would not consider health care insurance in the same category as other insurance types. It's a sick care payment plan, and if it weren't for the government making it illegal now, you'd still see lifetime maximum caps. Get too sick? Go fuck yourself. Die, don't die, go to the ER, charge it to a credit card, declare bankruptcy, we do not care about you. We don't care. We don't give a fuck about you.
That is the American healthcare and insurance system.
Automobile insurance is mandated by law in all 50 states (Maine lets you self insure but you have to stipulate you can do this, in effect it's still a mandate). Homeowner's insurance isn't required by law but might be required by the mortgage company. And renter's insurance may be required by a landlord. All of these only protect you against almost random events, or at least pretty much unpredictable events.
Health care insurance is weighted by being one part warranty and two parts aging payment plan. How many people use their health insurance every single year in some form or another? Dental? Eye doctor? Cold or flu? That's not insurance. It's a payment plan for predictable services. Even pregnancy is predictable. Something like cancer, congenital disease, are not predictable. So we've conflated a bunch of things into a giant payment plan, with nearly a dozen layers of middle men, every one of whom expects a profit cut. And so in the U.S. we have the most expensive per capita health care cost in the industrialized world, and yet not everyone is covered. Basically we are so stupid, that we are willing to pay more for health care services to deny other people being covered, and to jack ourselves off proudly that this is the best health care system in the world and it's (mostly) free market. It's a big fat stupid hand job.
So I would not consider health care insurance in the same category as other insurance types. It's a sick care payment plan, and if it weren't for the government making it illegal now, you'd still see lifetime maximum caps. Get too sick? Go fuck yourself. Die, don't die, go to the ER, charge it to a credit card, declare bankruptcy, we do not care about you. We don't care. We don't give a fuck about you.
That is the American healthcare and insurance system.