Hey, even if you "buy" the car, the bank owns it (as they do your house, therefore, have the more expensive insurance requirements to meet the demands of the lender, not coverage based on your good judgement and reasonable risk), if you aren't a millionaire and can't pay cash for your new car. Yet, we a required to buy insurance for something we don't own. After all, the requirement is to protect the bank, not the registered "owner" of the car, so ethically, the bank should pay for the insurance. Just buy the car and house in-full and in cash and save a bundle on insurance premiums. Or isn't the how the world works?
If we are given a car or house for free, but we still don't OWN it, but we are allowed to live in it or drive it all we want, we would view the cost of our "extended warranties" for each to be a reasonable exchange for the FREEBIE. If we buy electronic items in full retail, we get the standard warranty, 1 year with Dish, and yet we don't balk at the idea of the brand offering an extended warranty beyond the 1st year either as a big lump sum or nominal monthly payments, $6 for Dish Home Protection Plan.
Or do we view our programming bill to also include any costs for an extended warranty? Please, I want to hear from the people on this board who own a business to tell us if they do or would charge separately for extended warranty work and parts or if they pay for it out of whatever profits they make? Well that's how all insurance works: the insurance company always comes out ahead of policy holders' lifetime of premiums vs. the claims. If the insurance plans didn't do this, then it just wouldn't be insurance, as it works in the real world.
I understand the OP's view about the DHPP, and I agree. However, as an extended warranty (all dish boxes, if you purchase them at retail, still come with a 1 year warranty because you have laid out the big bucks to purchase it as opposed to getting it either at a significant discount or FREE of any charge for the box, in which case one really can't complain about nominal fees after you've gotten a freebie) that is the way far too many companies do business, and if we don't like it, we should not give them our business unless we are prepared to accept the costs that come without it with out being whiny about it (not that the OP has whined).
In fact, it may be less expensive in the long run NOT to have DHPP, as is the case for just about ALL extended warranties and insurance plans, but we should be prepared to pay the $95 home tech visit or the multiple $14.99 shipping charges when you may have to RMA a box twice in a month because the HDD was damaged in transit, and pay for the LNBF's and mult-switches that may have to be replaced. However most people aren't, and that is the advantage to any extended warranty: piece of mind and NOT having to pony up hundreds of dollars at the last minute. Otherwise, we take your chances.