It's all about incentives.
When you need medical care for any reason, do you want to turn to an organization run by people whose only desire is to make money off of you at a moment when you are vulnerable and in great need of compassion?
Why would you trust such people, when you can see clearly that they see your needs as a cost that they want to minimize in order to maximize their profits?
If you are in your right mind, you would avoid such people 'like the plague.'
There is nothing about the way insurance companies are set up and run that makes them inherently virtuous. They do not exist to help people. They exist to make money for individuals who are clever enough---and cynical enough---to exploit the pain and fears of people who have very few options available to them. Insurance company executives really do not care if the people they insure ever get the health care that they desire.
To understand what insurance companies do, think of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme.
Bernie talked a bunch of people into giving him large amounts of their money in exchange for his promise that he would provide them a healthy return on their investment. He understood clearly that in order for his scheme to work, he only had to have enough money on hand to be able to meet the claims (withdrawals) of his customers. The rest of the money that they handed over to him was his to do with as he pleased.
Insurance companies run a similar kind of game. In exchange for regular payments, they promise to pay their customers a certain amount of money if/when they get hurt or sick and when/if they go to certain doctors/hospitals to get the care that they need. Everyone in the insurance industry understands that they only need to keep enough money on hand to pay customer claims as they arise; the rest of the money that they receive from their customers is theirs to do with as they please.
In many consumer goods industries, the profit motive ends up being a good thing for consumers, but only because price competition occurs between the firms in the industry. Unfortunately, that is something we will never see in the private health care industry UNLESS the Democrats are able to create a robust government-run insurance alternative.
When insurance companies do compete, it is to see which of them is more talented at obfuscation. The policies they write are intentionally designed to present customers with so much complexity, it becomes virtually impossible for them to ‘comparison shop.’ They juggle several variables----premiums, deductibles, co-pays, % of service covered, which maladies are covered, etc., etc.----in such a way that no one can say which policy is superior to any other.
Insurance company executives understand with crystal clarity what their daily mission is: take in as much money as possible and then provide as little service as possible. The policies they write for customers are designed to achieve that goal: they offer a whole lot of ‘coverage’ for procedures that very few of their customers are likely to ever experience, but then they offer very little coverage for the kind of procedures their customers are most likely to experience.
The only way they can keep this manipulative con game going is to distract the attention of voters away from their evil scheme by focusing it on the scary image of Government that they have created, which is almost entirely the stuff of their perverse imaginations. They did it before, and they will do it again, unless we are able to create a scary image of the insurance companies as THE ENEMY who is trying to harm them, an image that would actually be an accurate reflection of reality.