The Angry Economist

Health insurance companies do three things:

• they pay ordinary medical bills which most people could afford. This is extremely expensive "insurance" because nearly everybody ends up getting a payout.
• They mitigate against the risk of a catastrophic (unaffordable) health collapse, say a car accident, or a chronic disease.
• They act as a risk pool to ensure that people who lost the genetic lottery do not have to pay all their own health care.

So, if you talk about changing how health insurance works, you need to address all three of these functions if you want to make sense.