More and more, average Americans are struggling in their day to day lives. With the loss of good manufacturing jobs and Wall Street’s attack on working people, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many Americans to get by. In this environment, the insurance industry’s continued nickel and diming of the American people is becoming intolerable. The regulations on the insurance industry need to be reformed to force these incredibly profitable companies to treat policy holders fairly. When I am elected President in 2016, one of my major goals will be to establish a non-profit insurance industry.

In the early days, neighbors would band together to help each other in the case of fires, storms, or other disasters that destroyed property. Working together, they would repair damage and help families get back on their feet. Eventually, communities started banding together by forming their own neighborhood protection funds that they would pay into in order to pool their resources to help protect themselves and their neighbors. These neighborhood funds are the root of modern insurance companies.

Insurance has, of course, come a long way from these humble, community-minded origins. Insurance companies are now specialized corporations, usually related to banking institutions, which take the premiums paid by their policy holders and reinvest them to reap huge profits. As private corporations, insurance companies have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much profit as possible. However, this is a goal that is directly opposed to the public interest. The function of insurance is to protect individual policy holders from loss by spreading risk among many people and groups. When policy holders’ premiums are being used to earn profits for a private insurance company, they are not protecting policy holders. We need fundamentally different insurance regulations.

Insurance is a vital service. It is entirely necessary for most people to cover medical costs, to cover liability to protect them in car accidents, to protect them as business owners, and to protect their homes and property. The sole goal of the insurance industry should be to protect their policy holders, not make a small number of shareholders wealthy. Over the last few decades, how many millions of Americans’ insurance dollars have found their way funneled into Wall Street coffers?

The solution to this problem is simply to mandate that all insurance companies must become nonprofit organizations. As nonprofits, they will be focused on their primary goal of protecting their policy holders because they will not need to be distracted with earning huge profits for their shareholders. If dividends from careful, prudent investments were credited to policy holders, insurance premiums would be significantly lower. This would make insurance much more affordable in every field of the industry, from health care to auto insurance.

An additional benefit in requiring that all insurance companies become nonprofit entities is that it will eliminate the incentive that these corporations currently have to spend millions of dollars lobbying state and federal representatives to introduce legislation that will allow insurance companies to make ever greater profits. The vast amount of resources these companies put into lobbying lead to higher premiums for all of their policy holders. In most circles, this kind of behavior is known as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Our leaders have allowed this insurance situation to get out of control. We need someone who will take a stand for Americans against the banks and Wall Street. People are unable to insure their property, businesses are closing, and physicians are giving up their practices, all because of the price gouging of the insurance industry. When I am President, one of my top priorities will be reining in the insurance industry and making sure that all Americans can obtain the security they need. Please join me in 2016 by casting a write-in vote for Art Drew for President of the United States.