No Stupid Questions

Car insurance isn't efficient nor effective. It's a complete ripoff.

Go file a claim, see how much grief they put you through. Every claim I've ever made, I've had to file a complaint with the state insurance regulators to get my insurance company to reimburse me (and I've never been at fault).

Insurance is the problem for both cars and health. They artificially inflate pricing for both, because they get to determine what is paid and at what rates (especially for health care).

It's why you hear stories of things like tylenol at the hospital being $10 a pill. Since insurance may only reimburse the hospital at 10% of the filed claim, the hospital increases the cost 10x. (It's more complex that this, it's why medical coding is a specific job now, finding ways to code things to get sufficiently reimbursed).

Why doesn't America join the first world and provide Universal Health Care?

So many explanations, but here's a summary: The concept of the efficiency of free markets is an illussion. Especially in conditions of guaranteed damand

By tying insurance to employment (side effect of some economic policy) the option to shop around was removed. When people are already forced to use the insurance provided by employment so that they can afford it, there is no way for some other insurance agency to be competitive. Then it just got worse over the years.

The ACA attempting to make a competitive market was a half assed substitute for just going all in on single payer, but at least people with the jobs that don't provide insurance have the possibility of affording it now so it is better. Just getting stabbed instead of being shot better.

You, don't have any bargaining power regarding your health. Let's say you broke a arm, a Mundane thing. You're in pain, and would do anything to make it stop. Once they give you some morphine, you're high and can't take any reasonable decision.

Moreover, you can decide to thrash away a car, it happens all the time, you can't do it with your life.

Because it's rigged against you. US has the most expensive health care in the world - It's not natural, this is crafted oligopoly to gouge the prices

(easier for health insurance companies to double-dip this way)

Because Americans care about cars.

It is effective and efficient, just not for the consumer.

Can only shop during a specific enrollment period.

With most other insurance, it only pays out of something unplanned happens. With health insurance, there are medical issues that can be known about in advance of them being to be addressed. So you might know you have a heart condition that needs to be operated on soon, but not immediately. This is known as a medical precondition.

Before the ACA was passed, health insurance companies would always exclude medical preconditions. So, if you switched insurance while needing that heart operation, you would find that you weren't covered and have to pay all the costs.

The ACA got rid of being able to limit coverage of medical preconditions, but it needed to provide a way for insurance companies to limit their exposure to people switching from a bad plan to an amazing plan that covered everything and would have to pay out immediately. To handle that, it made it a requirement for all people to get a minimum amount of medical insurance and to restrict when people could shop for insurance.

Not all cars and drivers have accidents, but everybody in his/hers life WILL need health care of some kind

universal health cover is also realtively simple too....

Regulatory capture

Because the customer and user are not the same people and insurance is keeping the costomer happy. High prices mean I cannot afford to quit my job or retire early. I have to have a job to have any form of insurance at all. It is great for the hr department that buys my insurance. In theory I can buy my own on the market but that means the thousand dollars a month my employer is paying gets thrown away.

Can only shop during a specific enrollment period

With cars it's relatively easy to determine if a particular collision occurred before or after you bought insurance. It's also very hard to predict exactly when these commissions will occur. Consequently, it is not so easy to delay and only buy a policy when you already have a claim ready to go.

With many progressive diseases, it's much easier to wait and only buy insurance if you think it's going to be expensive, but haven't been diagnosed with anything yet. That's why health insurance has open enrollment periods.

Simple answer: it’s greed and a legal racket.

Because the human body needs way more maintenance and expertise to maintain.

I think, from the perspective of the insurance companies, the risk is greater for insuring people's health than their vehicles. Also, people's lives are at stake, so it's basically just a complicated extortion market. I don't know I think all the pharma and healthcare industries should be nationalized and all the healthcare workers conscripted. Can't be worse than what we have now.

I mean, people are more complicated and more expensive to fix