Health "insurance" isn't really insurance

One of the things that probably causes a lot of difficulty in discussing the whole healthcare business is the fact that people speak of "health insurance." Now, when someone buys fire insurance, one really does not expect that one is going to get paid off out of the insurance; the chance of a real fire is small, so the premium is small. Even for life insurance, while we all expect to die, we probably will not die this year, or even very soon, so the insurance company takes the premium and uses a part of it to cover current liabilities (the people who do die in a given year), but most of it is invested until it's needed.

"Health insurance" is different. Most people will go to the doctor, at least for minor things like checkups, every year. And so every policy pays out something every year. It's really more a prepayment plan than an insurance plan. And if we called it that, it would make our discussioms more relevant to the health care problem.