I keep hearing this "self-sufficient" buzzword. If you really want widespread self-sufficiency, we need to break the addiction to insurance. You can't do anything anymore without filtering it through some kind of insurance scheme. It's an automatic percentage. A tax, paid to private firms, with no return. Where's the payoff when things go south? Every single homeowner pays mortgage insurance. It's mandatory. You can't get the loan without it. Where'd it go when the sheriff's selling the house?
There's this assumption that we need insurance to handle our healthcare, but they've only been in that game heavily since the '80s. Employer based healthcare was never set up as an insurance policy. It was run through cooperative trusts, where the money was in the control of the members who contributed. Blue Cross wasn't an insurance company & neither was Cigna or FHP. Cigna's an HMO, so I don't know exactly what their status is nowadays. I'm pretty sure FHP's completely gone, Humana sold off most of their hospitals to get into the insurance game, & Blue Cross has been swallowed up by Anthem. In 25 years, the coop trusts are gone & the contributions have turned to premiums. The premiums are 10 times higher. The only people who pay full retail price for healthcare are those who pay cash. Where's the money going?
The entire bank collapse of 2008 was caused by insurance fraud. Insurance is a hedge bet. Nobody thought anything about Lehman being leveraged 50 times their actual worth because it was insured through all the hedge schemes that were supposedly shuffling more money than the entire GDP of the planet. Where's the payoff? What happened to all that risk abatement? Where's the money?
Want to drive a car? Gotta buy insurance. You need insurance just to register the vehicle. It's liability insurance, but you can't insure yourself against liability for your actions. It's the vehicle that has to be insured. Want a second car? Double the premium. No-fault? Oh can't have that. Who was around when your State passed their mandatory insurance law? Remember the premiums before? Remember where they were a year later? 2 years later? I can't speak for the entire country, but I watched premiums double the first year in Arizona, & triple by the end of the second year.
I think we can handle almost anything if we just get the automatic percenters out of the loop. At least when I pay taxes to the government, I can find out where the money goes. It's my government. I resent being taxed by a segment of the private sector that doesn't produce anything but their own stock & pie in the sky promises of no risk.
