They charge you for everything, including your prescription drugs at a higher price than normal.
But she gets paid the same if she is sitting at her station or giving me an aspirin. 
I’ve driven for 37 years and to date never had to make a claim against my car insurance.
You might say that in any particular year your chances to need medical insurance, assuming general good health, are low. Can you say the same for a 37 year stretch? I doubt it. It’s certainly not the case with me. I was hospitalized for 10 days in October. That alone could have bankrupted me.
But, as I pointed out before, the average person will pay more in insurance premiums than they will receive in reimbursements. Looking strictly at the financial side, insurance is not a good deal for people who are poor or in decent health.
The incentives are against most people buying insurance. The only reason it was common before it became mandatory is that people got it for free as a side benefit from their employer. Sure, the same analysis applies if they could make the choice to opt out of employer coverage and pocket the premiums, but most employers don’t give you that choice.
No, I am including the relative risk of occurrence. Do you think getting pulled over or being involved in a vehicle accident happens less frequently than medical incidents that cause massive costs?
“Some” differences? Ya Think? :rolleyes:
Insurance premiums and the “not sunk” (for the insurance companies) cost of copays and deductibles goes to the revenue side of the balance sheet. Insurance companies do not by any stretch of the imagination run a “fund.” And unlike most business ventures, the lion’s share of insurance revenue goes to profit, judging by market valuations alone.
This (bolded part) is not true. Not by a mile. Not by a light year.
No, the penalty for not having health insurance can be death.
For example, people who lack health insurance who are involved in a severe automobile accident receive less treatment and are substantially more likely to die than those with private health insurance. (cite) A study of breast cancer patients in New Jersey find that the uninsured had a 49% higher mortality rate. (New England Journal of Medicine 329:326-33, 1993).
Moreover, it’s quite possible that you won’t even be given the option of running up huge medical bills and declaring bankruptcy. Cash Before Chemo: Hospitals Get Tough. “Sure, we’ll be happy to schedule your surgery to remove cancer; just stop by the business office on the way in and give us $50,000 upfront. Oh, you don’t have that much? Well, let us know when you do, and we’ll schedule surgery.”
You may have had a point, if I didn’t specifically identify only financial costs in the calculus.
When I stayed with my father overnight in the hospital, the nurses weren’t doing a lot of sitting.
I’ve driven 45 years and made maybe five claims, none major - but I’ve only spent one night in a hospital in my life. So it depends.
In both cases, you might have to make claims for things more or less beyond your control.
Both forms of insurance are necessary.
Drugs cost more in the hospital than in the local pharmacy for two reasons:
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labor - in the hospital each dose is set aside, labeled for the patient, and hand-delivered by a human being as opposed to you going to a pharmacy and picking up your prescription in bulk yourself, transporting it home yourself, and separating the doses yourself.
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The uninsured - a certain number of patients will simply not pay for their care. The hospital therefore charges everyone more so in the end they’ll have sufficient income to cover costs.
I take it, Broomstick, that you do not agree that they are milking the sick and those near death and their insurance companies for every cent they can get? 
Do you have any figures for this? Seems like the birth and care of the average amount of children would be more than the insurance premiums.
So, in your view, the amount of people who didn’t have insurance before ACA was no big deal, since most of them didn’t need it anyway?
Do you think bankruptcies because of lack of automobile insurance happened more frequently than bankruptcies because of medical bills?
Insurance companies aren’t charities. I hope I don’t need a cite for that. How do you think they make money? By paying out less than what they’re paid, that’s how.
Yes. The problem isn’t lack of insurance, its lack of healthcare. A $5k/year premium plus a $3000 deductible is just as devastating to a person making $13k/year as a couple of ambulance bills they will also never be able to pay. The problem is that people are poor and can’t afford healthcare. Whether a middleman is involved to help them spread that cost around is irrelevant if they can’t afford it in the first place.
Do you think you answered my question?
Exactly.
When a provider is “in-network” with an insurance company that means they’ve signed a contract with the insurance company to accept their rates, follow there rules about filling claims, getting advance approval for performing certain procedures, etc. A provider who hasn’t signed a contract with an insurance company (aka “out-of-network”) doesn’t have to do any of that. Barring a government regulation to the contrary they free to charge whatever they want, go after the patient anytime they disagree with that the insurance company pays, or make the patient pay for everything up front and sort the claim out with his insurance company on his own.
I don’t know the answer to your question. I’ve been involved in more high cost medical incidents then being pulled over or accidents in my car. Not sure how other people stack up to that.