Health Insurance

I think the issue with health insurance is that it is not really insurance or at least it is not used as insurance. What health “insurance” has evolved into is pre-paid medical. Insurance is supposed to be used for the unexpected, the unforeseen incident that we can do little to protect ourselves from. Fire insurance in case our home burns down. We have theft insurance in case we are burglarized. We buy auto insurance in case of an accident. If we treated auto insurance as we treat health insurance it would pay for our gas, oil changes and even routine repairs. I believe that many of the problems we have today with our health care system can be solved if we went back to a true insurance model. Use our health insurance only for major medical expenses. We should pay for our regular doctor visits, minor illnesses and yes even prescriptions out of our own pockets. But wait you say you cannot afford that! I think that we cannot afford not to. The only way to bring down the cost of health services while maintaining quality is to have the people using the services pay for the services directly. Let’s say that a routine doctor visit cost $350. I have no idea how much it actually costs and I would bet that most you don’t either. Many of us would rightly say that we cannot afford to go to the doctor and we would no longer go. This is where the miracle happens; doctors’ not wanting to go out of business find away to reduce the $350 office visit to $150 or want ever it takes to get patients back in the door. Medical costs are high because they can be. If the government takes over the payment of medical expenses from insurance companies we have not fixed the problem only masked the symptom. Artificial price controls will only lead to shortages and lower quality. This has been true ever time price controls have been used in every industry I have no reason to believe that this time will be the exception