Comment: There is nothing wrong with

There is nothing wrong with free market insurance. However, health insurance today has been completely distorted by government intervention.

The purpose of insurance is protection in the event of rare catastrophic occurrence. For instance, people buy life insurance for their death. Property insurance is for major rare occurrences like fire, falling trees, storm destruction. Property insurance is not for fixing a cracked window, new paint, replacing your water heater, etc. People insure their vehicle in case of crash or theft, or other major damage. They don’t buy insurance for oil changes, car washes, mechanical repair and tire replacements.

Yet the expectation for health insurance today is to cover just such routine maintenance items as a family doctor visit, strep throat, simple stitches, simple infection, and so forth. It separates the patient from the provider. It adds time delays, bureaucracy, hassles and frustration and expenses at every step. It interferes and degrades the provider patient relationship.

Imagine what the cost of auto insurance would be if every time you wanted an oil change, tire replacement, new struts, or muffler replacement you had to first open up a claim with your insurance carrier. After a couple days they would send you to an approved shop to inspect the vehicle and prepare a report for the claim handler. Then some time later the claim handler would issue a decision on whether to approve the oil change. Then they would send you authorization for the procedure. Then you would make an appointment for your oil change at the approved shop. The insurance carrier, however, would determine what grade and quality of oil. The shop would then charge you a copay and then prepare a detailed billing statement using constantly changing codes established by the insurance carrier. They would then wait 45 days for payment. If there were any clerical or other errors the payment request would be rejected and the shop would have a limited time to correct the errors and resubmit the itemized billing statement for approval, and again wait another 45 days for payment.

In such a scenario, it is easy to see that auto insurance would be multiple times more expensive then it already is, not to mention tedious and time consuming. The shops would be geared toward appeasing the insurance companies and not you, after it is the insurance company who is the real customer paying the bill and choosing which shops to approve.

And yet, such a system in health insurance is exactly what has been demanded and established through government distortion such a Medicare and other direct government programs, as well as a tax and regulatory system that makes the employer the customer of health insurance rather than the patient:
http://mises.org/daily/2285
http://mises.org/daily/5496
http://www.mises.org/daily/6099/Government-Medical-Insurance
http://ideasmatter.typepad.com/ideas-matter/2012/04/governme...