For-Profit Health Insurers Crush Policyholders
Americans who can’t afford health insurance might as well say they can’t afford to be alive. And when illness strikes, Americans with health insurance through major health insurers might as well say the same thing.
Whoever invented the US for-profit health insurance model is on par with the inventor of the atomic bomb. Both are designed so that not everyone makes it out alive.
Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League graduate accused of killing United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, in cold blood in 2024, is proof that Ivy League credentials do not necessarily indicate brightness. Mangione accusedly murdered an innocent family man who mindlessly perpetuated the callous business policies of a for-profit insurance company without realizing the CEO would be immediately replaced by another CEO facilitating the status quo. Mangione sacrificed his liberties for pointless “martyrdom.”
Since then, the greed pushing insurers to continue their infuriating policies, raise premiums and deny treatments to those most in need hasn’t changed. US insurers continue to be recklessly driven by amassing profits, with the major health insurers earning $54 billion in 2025 alone.
For-profit health insurance in countries other than the US is highly regulated, with profits reinvested to reduce premiums. In Australia and the United Kingdom, for instance, patients who want non-covered services, like a private hospital room, pay for it—a reasonable expectation.
But for major insurers to deny policyholders life-saving treatments for conditions, such as progressive cancers, is not only inhumane but borders on criminal.
Universal coverage should be the goal in the US as it is in many developed countries around the world with high-performing—yet still for-profit—health insurance systems.
The reason that major US for-profit health insurance companies continue to flourish and deny necessary treatments at their whim is because Americans keep feeding the beasts, making them more and more powerful. Despite groans, Americans pay their endlessly skyrocketing premiums and grudgingly accept their repeated denials of critical care.
It’s a classic case of enabling the exploiter (major for-profit health insurers) to continue exploiting (denying critical medical treatments) the exploited (frustrated Americans).
“Hey, if Americans are willing to submit to our unreasonable demands,” brag the major for-profit insurers, “it’s a green light to keep at it! Onward with even higher future premiums!”
It’s a classic case of enabling the exploiter (major for-profit health insurers) to continue exploiting (denying critical medical treatments) the exploited (frustrated Americans).
Meanwhile, nonprofit health insurers in the shadows of the for-profit behemoths quietly honor their responsibilities to policyholders.
Perhaps citizens should stop feeding the ravenous for-profit health insurance beast and instead pay into these more pro-human models, like nonprofit health insurers, where trust between patients and doctors is higher and care satisfaction is greater. When enough people make their voices heard with their wallets, the for-profit health insurance industry might tuck their tails between their legs and take their destructive money-grabbing schemes elsewhere.
Nonprofit health insurers in the US operate similarly to successful and robust health insurance systems in other developed nations. As nonprofit organizations, they are legally required to reinvest profits, which benefits policyholders with reduced premiums.
As with all insatiable beasts, major for-profit health insurers dominate the industry due to aggressive, well-funded marketing campaigns (costing tens of millions to over a billion dollars annually) and the appeal of lower administrative burdens for employers who offer these “convenient” plans.
And to think one billion dollars invested more humanely could cover a year’s worth of life-saving treatments for thousands of patients up to a number surpassing that of the entire US population.