the difference between vehicle insurance and health insurance should be easy to comprehend: while your scooter has a known value at any point in time, a limited value both you and your insurance company can agree it's better to declare a total loss, no such cap actually exists for humans, especially for loved ones. By law, no one can decide you're a total loss until the most emotionally involved human being decides to kill you. Are there any parallels in the commercial insurance world to this? No, human healthcare is in a category of its own.
This is inaccurate. Health insurance is very much like insurance in general. It is an actuarial exercise, and "value of human life" is an input to the calculus.
There is much argument and science that goes in to setting the value.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html Governments also use this for deciding on policy and cost effectiveness. Sometimes they change the value of it. Sometimes that makes news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/epa-value-of-life-changes-_n_812105.htmlIf you have worked in the health or life insurance industry, this would not be a point of issue. It is very well understood, many articles in each of the major journals discuss it.
http://library.soa.org/search.aspx?go=True&q=human+life+value&page=1&pagesize=10&or=TrueNotwithstanding this, you are certainly correct in that whether a caregiver chooses to attempt uncovered heroic efforts to preserve a life beyond what insurance will cover is an individual decision, and rarely an easy one.