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The average family of four taking home around fifty thousand dollars a year after taxes, spends twenty percent of their after tax money on extortion payments. If a medical crisis occurs every twenty years, then they have spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on paying for it. If the event costs 170,000 dollars then the insurance company gets to keep 80,000 dollars. If the event costs 330,000 dollars then the insurance company looses [sic] 80,000 dollars. Insurance companies like these odds. In fact, that is exactly how they make so much money.

Your fundamental error is looking at the insurance payments as a savings account in which you accumulate money to pay for something that may happen sooner or may happen later or may not happen at all. This is not what insurance is. You are paying for coverage in the event that something should happen. If you are covered and something happens that costs a couple million dollars (depending on your coverage), you're taken care of. If, after that, you discontinue that coverage, you don't have to reimburse the insurance company for what was spent on you.

You may as well be bitching about renting versus owning a house or a car. "Wah, wah, wah. I spent all this money leasing the car and in the end it still belongs to the leasing company. Wah, wah, wah. I spent all this money renting my apartment and in the end it still belongs to the owner of the building."

The insurance company does not *keep* $80K. The $80K is spent on other claims for catastrophic illnesses in the pool of covered participants. Insurance is SHARED RISK.

Presently, State Insurance Commissioners regulate all Insurance companies operating in those States and generally; after claims payments, maintaining reserves, expenses for sales & administration there is only a very small *profit margin* which is generally used to keep premiums in check. Most insurance companies are *mutual*; similar to credit unions and non-profit organizations. Participants are the stock holders.

No, I don't look at insurance as a savings account. I look at insurance as legalized system of extortion. There are very few products that have so much contempt for the customer and offers so little redeeming value that laws have to be passed to make people buy it.
As far as the argument that medical costs can can exceed millions of dollars, they are very far and few between, otherwise your premiums would have to be tens of thousands of dollars per month in order for Insurance companies survive, much less make a profit. For these rare occurrences, bankruptcy courts exist.
I've never heard any of my tenants complain about their rents.