“You can see how auto insurance operates similar to home insurance. You are more “the customer” and the only customer in the relationship with the repair outfit, NOT your insurer.”
As it happens, Joe Flower has used taking your car to the body shop as an example of how the market for health insurance is different:
Just because the health insurance market is presently allowed by federal and state regulators to operate differently than other insurances, like home and autos, does not mean either that it should or that it has to. The driver to that question is not “markets” but the insurance regulations that have defined that market, allowing collusion of insurers and those you are to get your insured services from. It is collusion that house and auto insurers are not allowed to do.