IAAA (I Am An Actuary) and, although I do Property & Casualty instead of Health insurance, I just want to set a few things straight.

While some have said that traditionally insurance is based around spreading risk over groups, that still holds currently, even when some are denied coverage. It's just that the risk is spread over a portfolio of similar people. This is the ideal way to set up insurance for companies because by being able to select the cheaper people to insure and putting them all in a portfolio together, they can sell them insurance at a much lower price than someone who has a broad portfolio and charges everyone the same.

For example, if you just get a life insurance policy that requires practically no info, you'll get a lousy policy since there might be a lot of smokers, morbidly obese people, cancer patients, and so forth in the portfolio so of course premiums will be high. However, if you go through a medical check, answer lots of questions, and are found to be very healthy, you'll get a good rate.

Clearly, companies that offer such highly-differentiated policies will steal all of the healthy people from other companies. The other companies will be left with the expensive people by being adversely selected, will lose tons of money, and will either have to differentiate more or go out of business. Note that more expensive people to insure can usually still get policies, but they'll have to pay something more in line with their expected costs. So the net result is that people are charged fairer rates, but are still protected. So with car insurance, better drivers (both with a good track record and those whose profiles make them less likely to get in accidents, going by age, gender, income and so forth) get lower rates and riskier drivers get higher rates.

Applying this to health insurance, healthy people will be protected against the unexpected (cancer, emergency room treatment, and so forth) but will have to pay little since it's unlikely they'll incur high costs. This is good for both those consumers, who get low rates, and for the insurance companies, who undercut the competition by better identifying the people who are cheaper to insure. The flip side of the coin is that more expensive people are deemed uninsurable, as the article states, by smart insurance companies. But this phenomenon isn't unique to health insurance. If you have terminal cancer, good luck getting life insurance. If you live in a place that gets flooded every year, no way a (non-governmental or non-subsidized) insurance company will cover flood damage for your house.

Of course, this ignores arguments about if such things are fair, right, or how a country's health system should be run (and for the record, I live in Canada and think it's ridiculous how the US still doesn't have proper healthcare). Also, the auto insurance industry here in Ontario has undergone a huge change in the last 5 years. Many companies have closed or had to make significant changes due to staggering losses. The losses were due to both increases in costs from accidents, especially in Toronto, and other companies using much better statistical models to undercut the competition and get all the good drivers. Now, in order to stay competitive, companies have to use predictive models to estimate future trends as opposed to just assuming things will stay roughly constant proportionately.

How does being a doctor grant one real insight into health-care on a national basis? That would be like expecting a carpenter to design a 2 km-long suspension bridge. The doctor might be able to spot a few ways hospitals can do things better, but that's it. Actual experience would be running a hospital at least, or perhaps being a manger at a health insurance company.
As for businessmen, to put it simply, they might know micro-economy, but economic policy for a country is based around macro-economy, which is very different.

Autonomous cars could also be treated the same way vaccines are. That is, if they result in a very significant decrease in fatalities, then the car company (and the driver, if they maintained the vehicle properly, etc.) are shielded from liability for those fatalities that do occur when the car is robot-driven.

Umm, the murder rate for the US is about 4.7 intentional homicides per 100 000 people, while for the United Kingdom it's 1.2. So almost 4 times more murders per capita in the US.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The administrative overhead for the NHS is 5%. The US is probably the least efficient system in the OECD world. Source:http://business.leeds.ac.uk/news-events/item/articles/2011/January/why-the-nhs-reforms-could-result-in-more-not-less-managers/

I've got books that were bought by my great-great-great-grandfather. Guess again about books.

IAAA (I Am An Actuary) and while I don't work in health-care, I do look at all sorts of life expectancy statistics, and I think I can say that your premiums would probably be higher if the primary care doctor visits weren't included. This is because then a lot of cheapskates would only go to the doctor when they absolutely have to, and so an easily preventable and curable thing turns into a catastrophe. So those 3 visits per year probably significantly lower the number of expensive treatments the insurer foots the bill for.

By non-essential they only mean that for the short term. For example, according to the BBC, the people who process visas and passports are now on furlough, so obviously that can't go on for very long.

You underestimate how much money is in Switzerland. Think trillions.

Kickstarter seems to have raised at most about 3 million dollars for games. That's decent money for an indie title, but a small fraction of the budget for a AAA release.

I hope you realize that until the Fed was created, the US underwent a series of brutal recessions and crashes. The problem is that whatever happens, inflation, deflation, no change or whatever, it needs to be predictable so that companies, banks, and consumers can easily make long-term plans. Volatility makes such planning almost impossible, so as a result everyone is more conservative, no one spends money, and growth slows or you might even end up with a recession. So proper guidance is necessary to provide the stability that long-term investment requires.

Because of how banks are raising reserve ratios across the board, both due to more stict regulations and by choice, the money supply would decrease significantly if new currency wasn't issued to make up for the shortfall. Inflation is, if anything, too low right now, at least in the US.

Umm, why can't you just ignore the slow students? If they come to class unprepared, that's their problem.

Such a policy might result in a massive drop in the difficulty of courses, and thus the quality of the institution. From my experience, students will give glowing reviews to easy teachers and crucify teachers that actually have solid standards for grading and stick to them (so those that won't bellcurve a class's grades if the people in the class don't understand the content).

That's a higher top speed than most formula 1 cars, and yet we all know which would win in a race.