Insurance does not produce anything. It's "product" is purely bureaucratic; that is to say, they pay people to fill out forms and talk to customers, but they don't actually make anything. They are just involved in the redistribution of money (much like banks).
An insurance company then determines its rates based on likely claims. Like a casino, they mathematically calculate their their risk so that it is practically impossible to lose money and, unlike a casino, they can change the rules on individual customers whenever they want.Can you think of any other company that fits this description?
Here's another one to watch out for: profit greatly exceeds product. Personally, I think there should be a limit to how much of a mark-up you can give a product. Soda or designer clothing, for example, sells for hundreds of times production cost. Or how about "product greatly exceeds profit?" This is a good way of describing sweatshop labor.
The basis of a functioning economy is a fair market. "Free market" is another term for capitalist anarchy. It returns us to a state of survival of the fittest. But what we have is not a genuinely Darwinist economy if we are willing to bail out companies that fail. What we have is a little closer to selective breeding -- capitalist eugenics.
