Think about your typical insurance system: Car insurance (accident), home insurance (earthquake, flood), other insurance (damage, theft). These typical insurance systems all operate very similarly:

• Most people pay a relatively affordable premium once or twice a year. In this case “affordable” means most people won’t go hungry because they have to pay their insurance premiums.
• There is a good chance that an “event” (accident, damage, theft) will never occur for most people. In the rare instances in which events occur repeatedly in certain areas (hurricanes, floods, wildfires), the insurance system breaks down; that is, people find it very difficult and/or costly to get insurance against that type of event.
• If an event does occur, the cost of repair is relatively affordable for most people. The cost of repair is usually some fraction of the original price of the item being insured. Since, presumably, people can afford to buy the item originally, they can generally afford to pay some fraction of that price to repair it.

• Health insurance premiums can easily eat up a significant portion of one’s monthly income.
• In contrast to insurance systems for “normal” things, there is a very good chance that a “health event” will occur at least once in a person’s life.
• Again, in contrast to insurance systems for “normal” things, there is a good chance that if a health event does occur, it will be unaffordable.

The health insurance system in its current state is not really an insurance system, but rather a payment plan. And the reason the system is breaking down is that many (most?) people receive healthcare treatments that they never would be able to afford if they had to pay for it themselves out of pocket.