News f2s wrote:

As for those who have been criticising the profit motive of
insurers (and suggesting public insurance) earlier in this thread,
most of them did not understand the business model.

Au contraire mon frère, I understand the business model perfectly. What
I don't understand is the lemming-like response of consumers of
insurance products. The product marketed by private companies don't
meet the consumer's needs, yet for some inexplicable reason the consumer
continues to purchase a poor-quality good. FUD merchants and other
apologists for this scam suggest finding another marketer of an equally
flawed product. Bizarre. I think someone is injecting a constant
low-level dose of LSD into drinking water systems in the US.

Insurance is a
cash flow business.

obviousness snipped

By all means let public insurance compete with private insurance.
But you need some safeguards to make sure that that cash flow
doesn't disappear into the public spending maw. Because it's going
to have to be re-paid! By whom? The taxpayer.

Nonsense. Publicly run insurance companies such as the Insurance
Corporation of British Columbia are profitable entities. These profits
reduce the pressure for increases in property tax rates in BC. Roads,
schools and hospitals are not a "public spending maw". Private
insurance companies have outlived any usefulness they may have had to
their customers.