I don’t have a house to loose.
Frankly, I am one of those people that if you sued there’d be little to confiscate. I’m not living paycheck to paycheck, but there is no way I can, with my current job, amass a great deal of wealth. I do insure my vehicles, and because they’re fully owned I insure them for liability and not the physical vehicle itself but I can only afford so much. No one who sues me is ever going to collect a multi-million award for the simple reason I do not have that many assets and likely never will.
What do you consider “proper insurance”? I have a friend with some wealth who once stated what he considered a minimum level of insurance, and honestly the premium per month would exceed what I was paying in monthly rent at the time! (As I mentioned, I’m doing a bit better these days - now it would only be about 2/3 of what my rent is). Then again, he had a LOT of assets to protect. And the means to do so. What is your definition of “proper”?
For people below a certain income level - and there are tens of millions of people in that category - the system is NOT reasonable in any sense of the word. Any sort of serious illness or injury could bankrupt them even with insurance. “Proper” insurance is too expensive to purchase because, to be frank, you must eat and have a roof over your head before other considerations. Always and ever one paycheck away from disaster and no way to get off that treadmill.
These days I’m a bit better off, but for years I purchased the legal minimum of vehicle insurance not because I wanted to deprive some other party of satisfaction in the event of an accident but because even after food stamps and a garden to grow food and family helping me out when they could and working two jobs for a time and looking for better that was all I could afford. Literally. At one point selling our wedding rings to make ends meet for another couple months on an apartment that had once been nice but was at the time leaking every time it rained and just generally falling apart because that was all we could afford at the time.
If you’ve never been that sort of poor I’m not entirely sure you understand. Sure, there are jerks who are just cheap bastards but quite a few people are driving around with minimal insurance, or even no insurance, because there’s more month than money.
When you’re already living on the edge of disaster the prospect of being sued just isn’t so alarming, there is a strong tendency to laugh at the prospect of bankruptcy when you’re already bankrupt and scavenging cans off the side of the road hoping you can make the rent this month.
The middle class in the US lives in fear of falling into poverty. Those actually in poverty just ignore the risks because they no longer have much to lose. Threats of “you’ll lose your house!” ring hollow to someone who not only doesn’t own a home but is themself facing homelessness because their minimum wage job doesn’t pay enough to cover the rent even for a run-down place in a slum.