[nodamage]

Insurance companies acting as profit-seeking middlemen between doctors and patients create a perverse incentive to drive up costs on both ends. It's a terrible feedback loop caused by treating health care (which is ultimately a cost center) as a for-profit enterprise. Every other modern country has managed to figure this out except the United States.

[refurb]

* It's a terrible feedback loop caused by treating health care (which is ultimately a cost center) as a for-profit enterprise.*

Ummm... you do realize that many other countries with universal coverage rely on private insurance, right?

[nodamage]

Not really the same thing. Insurers in a purely for-profit marketplace will always be incentivized to reject coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and drop coverage for people who become sick, because both groups are unprofitable to treat. The only way to avoid this is with strict regulations preventing insurers from doing what's in their own best interests at the expense of everyone else.