Wouldn't health care be less expensive by eliminating insurance companies?

you couldn't get rid of them all at once, it would be chaos. but I do think the insurance companies have over the years created a dynamic in which the normal limits to inflation have been removed. prices can't normally rise to such stratospheric heights when people simply can't pay them. insurance amplifies "what the market will bear." presumably the justification for this would be the vast amounts of cash made available for medical research, but the percentage of this cash that actually goes to the insurance companies and isn't used to research anything is itself staggering, and also the more advanced and expensive medicine is, the fewer actual patients tend to be involved. I would say as far as medical advancement is concerned such a system mainly only benefits a few extremely rich individuals with relatively rare conditions, at the great expense of the vast majority who normally need only basic medical services

Yes. Just removing the profit motive of bean counters and share holders would drop costs like 18%. No more premiums going up every year. Of course, with a Universal system, you also can bargain for drug costs and eliminate all out of pocket expenses too.

Be definition. Insurance companies to not provide any health care. They do take a profit.