How many health care insurance providers are in the United States?

I am just a retired citizen who no one has probably ever heard of. Anyway, can you please tell me how many health care insurance providers there are in the United States? The other day an unknown source said 1600. My reason for asking is that since there are hundreds of companies already in the business, it would be a complete waste of money for the Government to start another competing program! I need this information to try to convince various people to use some common sense--and save billions of dollars--since the Government is not good at running anything anyhow.