Sgriob wrote:
It just seems wrong that a service that's supposed to help people has managed to become a way for people to do nothing but make millions of dollars.
Yeah, I get kind of torn sometimes over this, to be sure. But the thing is, it's the profit that draws the investment, and the investment that draws the research. The best minds work tirelessly, not because they are so altruistic, but because there's a chance that they might develop something that will make them rich.
And it isn't all about profit. You cannot work tirelessly at something you aren't good at, or hate. So, there's that. But the potential for profit is a great motivator.
In the end, new things are developed and life is better for it. Sure, some of the cutting edge stuff may not be covered by insurance, but by and large insurance companies are populated by bean counters. They have columns to add and totals to calculate. Everything is reduced to an equation. Risk versus profit, all based on experience. So they don't want to pay for things that aren't proven, because there is no certainty in unproven things, and they have no "experience" to plug into their equations.
The bean counters can tell you how long you will live, what the chance is of you getting a certain disease, what the chance is of you getting married to an Irish girl and having three kids, how many computers you will own in your life, etc.
In the end, it works.