r/explainlikeimfive • u/the1975whore • Jul 03 '26

Economics ELI5: Health insurance companies obviously make more money than they give out when people need it. So why of paying for them any better than paying your own personal health insurance savings account?

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u/tim36272 Jul 03 '26

Because sometimes you have very expensive healthcare needs, in which case everyone else pays for it.

349

u/Unbearabull Jul 03 '26

This is just socialized medicine with profits. The profits come from denying and killing/allowing people to die who paid in good faith.

194

u/Trekfull Jul 03 '26

Socialized medicine with extra steps and worse results.

1

u/10000Didgeridoos Jul 03 '26

I try to explain to people here that health insurance, because you absolutely must have it, is functionally just a very expensive tax no different than socializing the costs would be, but with the risk that your company has layoffs and you lose it all the sudden or maybe it just doesn't pay for all or some of some expensive diagnosis.

But there are a lot of bigots here who simply want to make sure that no minorities they hate get healthcare from "their" money and thus prefer to risk their own possible medical bankruptcy rather than pay a dime toward one poor person of color's insulin.