Insurance is a noble craft, but health insurance follows none of its core principles

May 31 of this year was a bittersweet day of sorts. That's the day my license as an insurance producer in the state of New Jersey expired.

I never got the chance to actually become the eternally derided 'insurance salesman' as I instead took a job writing about the fashion industry before I could snag my first client. But in studying for the licensure test, I learned a lot about insurance and gained a great deal of appreciation for it.

Through each chapter on life, disability, prize indemnity and long-term care coverage, I was heartened by what a noble institution and profession this was.

Insurance is the linchpin that makes a society function and holds the powerful in check, no matter how wealthy they are.

I started thinking how the NFL didn't start paying serious attention to the long-term effects of concussions because it suddenly started caring about the well being of its players. No, these changes have come about because even a $20 billion a year industry couldn't get insurance if it continued to pay out class action lawsuits to former players — and their families/victims — who suffered early onset dementia or suicide by cop.

It's remarkable how a simply applied equation of risk can be such a leveling force for good.

Then, I got to the chapter about medical insurance and all those encouraging feelings turned to sheer nausea.

All of the principles that define the practical and winning structure of insurance go out the window when you get to medical. There, it's no longer about starting with a huge pile of cash and applying conservative actuarial risk for slow and steady profit; it instead can be best expressed in three words — deny, delay, depose. And this isn't on some internal company memoranda, mind you, it's on the state licensing test!

Medical insurance is so contrary to the founding principles of insurance that it really shouldn't be called insurance at all. It is more like a grift, a racket, a shakedown of patients, hospitals and providers alike that givescapitalism its blackest of eyes.

Traditional insurance makes money by betting that each individual client will live and thrive for a long time before they have need of a claim. Medical insurance, on the other hand, only profits by denying claims, or in other words, not doing their jobs.

This isn't news to most people, even before 26-year-old Luigi Mangioni shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside his Midtown Manhattan hotel last week, setting off a zeitgeist moment of schadenfreude and unprecedented contempt for a victim.

Hunting CEOs will do absolutely nothing to change the game, however. In a few days this will all fall out of the news cycle, Brian Thompson will be replaced as easily as he was hired, and all those who made jokes on social media will have gained nothing but bad karma.

Almost all politicians are either bought and paid for by health insurance companies or are too allergic to any alternative that might be considered 'socialist' to author any meaningful change.

The only hope is that the insurance industry as a whole acknowledges health insurance as the cancer to its principles that it is and extracts it. If it doesn't, not only will a nation full of Luigi Mangioni's be coming after health insurance CEOs, it'll be open season on the Geico Gecko and LiMu the Emu, too.

Matt Hickman is the managing editor of the Herald/Review.He can be reached at [email protected].