John Stossel on America's 'Crazy Health-Insurance System'

"Imagine if your car insurance covered oil changes and gasoline. You wouldn't care how much gas you used, and you wouldn't care what it cost. Mechanics would sell you $100 oil changes. Prices would skyrocket."

And that's precisely the problem we're seeing today with our current health insurance system. Our "all-inclusive" system of health care coverage is designed in a way that doesn't encourage patients to think in a dollar and cents fashion... The result: patients treat health care similar to how a sunday brunch enthusiast treats the buffet line... we keep going back for more even when we shouldn't. Insurance companies are burdened with claims and we're stuck with an antidiluvian system that is plagued with red tape.

Not to say that we should do away with health insurance, rather, we should rethink how it's prescribed and use it only for those unfortuante instances of catastrophic events. This is precisely how President Bush's idea of Health Savings Accounts works.

As most democratic candidates for president have rolled out their plans for universal health care, Stossel points out that, "America's health-care problem is not that some people (47 million) lack insurance -- it's that 250 million Americans do have it."

The perpetual cycle of endless paperwork and bureaucracy that insurance brings with it flies in the face of common-sense, free market ideals. And, at the end of the day, it's the insurance companies who have the say on patient care, not the consumer.

For more ideas on how we can reform our health care system, click here to read Foster's article, “A Cure for the Health Care Crisis”.