As I read the various pundits on both sides, I'm struck at how often the issues of quality of care are confused with insurance issues (and vice versa). Insurance of course centers around risk and who should bear that risk. This is something I know a great deal about.
Health care of course deals with what happens once a loss (i.e. an illness, injury etc) occurs.
Part of the problem is that we've come to think of health care and health insurance as the same. Additionally, consumers treat health insurance totally differently than any other form of insurance. For example, no one would consider paying insurance premium to insure against the cost of oil changes. Why not? That's just maintenance. Yet we seem to have no trouble expecting insure against the cost of routine medical exams. Yes part of this may be because of the cost involved (if oil changes were $300 a pop)!
I can't help but think what we really need is more freedom for consumers and the introduction of greater market forces. I know many on the left feel, wrongly I believe, that market forces are ruining health care.
In auto and property insurance we are regulated in California by the fair claims and settlement practices. These rules have done a pretty good job of keeping insurers honest.
I do have some ideas on reform. I'll be happy to share them later. In the meantime lets make sure when we are talking about health care, we really are talking about health care and not the allocation of risk.
