What benefit do health insurance companies add to the health care system?

Insurance companies have been getting a free ride from the public. Government pays for all the sick people (elderly and poor) and the private insurers get to fight over the healthy people. What makes this sickening, is that we, the public, are paying for everything, anyway. In essence, everyone is already insured, but in a backwards way.

Hospitals must provide care for anyone who shows up. Some of these people can’t or won’t pay for their care. This is called uncompensated care. Hospitals receive some extra payments from the government (all taxpayers) to cover uncompensated care. The rest is made up by raising the rates for patients who have private insurance (insured taxpayers). This is called cost shifting, in the health care business.

So we, the taxpayers of the United States, pay for the health care for everyone, already. We do it in a very inefficient way that adds billions in administrative costs to our system. All so one sector of industry (health insurers) can make a profit.

Why are we subsidizing the health insurance industry? Is there any benefit for taxpayers in allowing the private sector to compete to insure healthy people, while we pay for the much more expensive care of sick people, and we all pay for uncompensated care through taxes or cost shifting?

They say they are introducing competition by involving the private sector, but why should we let companies compete over handouts from us, when we have to pay for everyone’s health care, anyway? Is it all in the name of ideology? What do we get for these increased costs?