The point of my pedantic comment was to note that the goal of seeking maximum profit is universal, what is not is being able to extract maximum profit, which is made possible by supply and demand, which you alluded to with "you need this or you see a loved one suffer".
>It ceases to be a purely economic function because people can't just walk away, and that has market effects that mean the typical pressures of a free market (such as 'supply and demand') become muddied.
Supply and demand has not become muddied. The ability to extract maximum profit is from the fact that there is very little supply and extremely high demand.
>Sufficient supply is irrelevant if Spot is suffering -right now-, all the providers form a monopoly, and their prices are massively inflated.
Sufficient supply and demand implies lots of agents supplying demand and lots of agents willing to buy, resulting in a situation where either party can walk away from the other to enable price discovery. If all the providers form a monopoly, they no longer act as individual agents, and hence there is no longer sufficient supply.
The dynamics of supply and demand and price discovery do not quite care about the suffering during the process, which is where the concept of insurance comes in. It could be provided by well regulated private markets with sufficiently well behaved actors, or by society at large via taxes, but the concept is the same. You prepare for unaffordable, unexpected expenses by "paying" in advance so that at the time of needing the product/services, you are not having to negotiate because the negotiations have already happened.
>It ceases to be a purely economic function because people can't just walk away, and that has market effects that mean the typical pressures of a free market (such as 'supply and demand') become muddied.
Supply and demand has not become muddied. The ability to extract maximum profit is from the fact that there is very little supply and extremely high demand.
>Sufficient supply is irrelevant if Spot is suffering -right now-, all the providers form a monopoly, and their prices are massively inflated.
Sufficient supply and demand implies lots of agents supplying demand and lots of agents willing to buy, resulting in a situation where either party can walk away from the other to enable price discovery. If all the providers form a monopoly, they no longer act as individual agents, and hence there is no longer sufficient supply.
The dynamics of supply and demand and price discovery do not quite care about the suffering during the process, which is where the concept of insurance comes in. It could be provided by well regulated private markets with sufficiently well behaved actors, or by society at large via taxes, but the concept is the same. You prepare for unaffordable, unexpected expenses by "paying" in advance so that at the time of needing the product/services, you are not having to negotiate because the negotiations have already happened.