[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.