To be the middle man between doctors and patients? To tell us only healthy people can see a doctor? Why do we need them? Do they provide any service at all besides collecting money? Are you old enough to remember when doctors were healers and not in medicine to collect as much money as possible from your insurance company before the company drops you for being sick? Besides collecting money, what do insurance companies do? And don't say they help cover the high cost, the main reason for personal bankruptcy in this country is medical bills. These are people who had insurance, but were dropped because of major illness. So that's not it. (this actually drives the costs up) This country was built on small businesses, not on criminal big business that provides no service, no service at all. Can you imagine a world in which all you have to worry about when you are seriously ill... is getting well? Besides collecting money, what do insurance companies do?
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Insurance should be for catastrophic risks, the kind of risks which will drive people into bankruptcy. Health insurance in the U.S. is not for catastrophic risks. Health insurance companies have figured out ways to make lots of money by being middle men, doing the administration, collecting money in what is essentially a prepayment plan for ordinary run to the doctor kind of stuff. The insurance companies are middlemen even in government programs like Medicare. Medicare almost did not pass, but when President Johnson made a deal with the insurance companies that they would be paid many millions of dollars administrating the program as intermediaries, then they supported it. Just like banks have been looking for ways to make more and more money without taking on risks, so have insurance companies. There is a role for a government public option for catastrophic risks, but only if the insurance companies are kept out of it.
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