You’re describing government. People cooperate through government to insure stability.

I will never understand the endless linguistic indirection when in the end it’s all Soylent Green; just people.

Are you saying that whenever people cooperate voluntarily, it's a government?

Government isn't just how people cooperate. Government is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. We've seen that force used in places like Australia or New Zealand to enforce quarantines of healthy people. If their Government feared the people because they bore arms, you would not hear stories about the Australian government allowing uninfected people outside for 1 hour of exercise for good behaviour

> no inherent reason it must be a profit-making business

Insurance is an extremely demanding business. This isn’t something you can throw commodity drones at. If you’re willing to create a coöperative job that pays millions to its actuaries and risk managers, fine. Most don’t. Hence why a profit-based model works: it can incentivise the people that are needed for it to work in the long run to do the job. (In the short run, anyone can run a sloppy insurance operation.)

One interesting experiment in this area is the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan, where the government has run a break even auto and property insurance organization since 1945. It does not receive money from the tax payers and is completely self sustaining:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_Government_Insura...

Aside from being non-profit, an additional benefit that makes this model more cost effective is that you don't have insurance companies suing each other because everyone has the same insurance company.

Mutual insurance companies exist, presumably they are also bailing in places where the cost is unsustainable.