A consequence of this approach is that the insurance industry might as well not exist as far as I am concerned; they have poisoned their entire value proposition. I will not voluntarily do business with people who plan to screw me over.

A rule of thumb is that it's never worth taking out insurance on something that you can afford to replace in full yourself.

Note though that in many cases, insurance is mandated by law. In many states you have to have auto insurance. If you have a mortgage you usually have to have home insurance. The cost of medical treatment is such that a single accident can cost more than your lifetime earnings, essentially forcing an automatic bankruptcy. Indeed, the reason for the auto and home insurance mandates is often to pay for liability coverage in case you get sued for somebody else's medical treatment.

Given the dealings that I've had with the insurance industry, it seems that many companies realize that their function is just to tick the legal box. They have skeleton or nonexistent claims-handling departments that employees are frequently laid off from. The goal is to slow-walk any claims past the statute of limitations, so that nobody gets paid out anyway, but they can continue to collect the premiums because the government requires that everyone have insurance. (But then another phenomena is that people are increasingly ignoring the government too, such that they now offer "uninsured motorist coverage" to make up for cases where you're hit and hurt by someone who illegally doesn't have insurance.)