[anothercomment]

But lots of insurance companies operate on the risks you mention, floods, earthquakes. There are insurance companies that insure other insurance companies against outliers, for example.

Sure, there is no guarantee that the whole network can not go broke. But that goes for governments, too.

Also I think health care will always have to be capped at some point, because with arbitrarily high investments, you could presumably keep people alive indefinitely (heart fails - attach heart machine. Lung fails - attach lung machine...). That is why in the UK afaik they don't pay for dialysis once you reach a certain age.

[crdoconnor]

"But lots of insurance companies operate on the risks you mention, floods, earthquakes. "

Where this does happen there's usually a fairly low liability cap, some sort of hybrid private/public partnership or a combination.

"Also I think health care will always have to be capped at some point, because with arbitrarily high investments, you could presumably keep people alive indefinitely (heart fails - attach heart machine. Lung fails - attach lung machine...). That is why in the UK afaik they don't pay for dialysis once you reach a certain age."

The UK is almost entirely communist (this is a description, not a slur) in the way funds are allocated. They base funding decisions on something called QALYs - quality adjusted life years.

The practical upshot is that expensive operations that will add 6 months of painful life for an elderly patient are not prioritized under the NHS whereas operations that could save a newborn child's life have virtually no funding limits.