Insurance isn’t the same as savings though. Insurance is just a bet. The insurance company basically says “Give me $5000 this year and I will cover your health care costs if you ever accrue any this year otherwise I keep the money.” The insurance company just bets that most of their clients won’t put in any claims.
Not to mention most people can never save enough money to cover the cost of a massive healthcare bill if they get into an accident or get cancer.
Another version is that the insurance is a mutual fund where everyone is polling money that can be used at any time to pay medical bills. This is not what is happening in the US of course but in some countries the model is similar to that.
The administrators of the mutual fund still make a bet that their income (mainly the money they charge members/customers) will meet or exceed the claims they pay out, no? They might not have a profit motive, but that doesn’t change the basic economics of needing income to be >= expenses.
That’s not insurance, but - funny, I don’t know an English word for this concept. Ok - looked it up, there are words like “friendly society” and “mutual aid fund”. Literally what you wrote.
Insurance isn’t the same as savings though. Insurance is just a bet. The insurance company basically says “Give me $5000 this year and I will cover your health care costs if you ever accrue any this year otherwise I keep the money.” The insurance company just bets that most of their clients won’t put in any claims.
Not to mention most people can never save enough money to cover the cost of a massive healthcare bill if they get into an accident or get cancer.
This is the US version.
Another version is that the insurance is a mutual fund where everyone is polling money that can be used at any time to pay medical bills. This is not what is happening in the US of course but in some countries the model is similar to that.
The administrators of the mutual fund still make a bet that their income (mainly the money they charge members/customers) will meet or exceed the claims they pay out, no? They might not have a profit motive, but that doesn’t change the basic economics of needing income to be >= expenses.
That’s not insurance, but - funny, I don’t know an English word for this concept. Ok - looked it up, there are words like “friendly society” and “mutual aid fund”. Literally what you wrote.