this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Yes, it's a for profit business that makes it's profit off of trying to have the most accurate odds they can. They charge you slightly more than they expect to lose on you (the house edge) and then they're betting on every roll of the dice. That's exactly how casinos earn money (though casinos try to compete on experience and payout, while insurance competes on price and payout).
The difference is that the casino is attempting to take advantage of your greed and wants you to stay there and bet everything you have. Meanwhile the insurer is selling relief from fear of financial ruin and is asking you to make scheduled bets that you want to lose every month. American health insurance has massive issues and should be replaced with something akin to the NHS before it was defunded, but nobody is losing their shirt buying homeowners insurance unless the area they live in is now being pummeled by the climate crisis like southern California or the gulf of Mexico.
Would government run insurance be better? Yeah probably. But in the era before modern insurance a major part of the draw of fraternal organizations was that they served that role.