Why is Health Insurance Different then other forms of Insurance?

This is a great common sense article that advocates that health insurance should be more like home owners and car insurance.

And there lies one of the problems with the health insurance reform debate. State government mandates and favorable tax treatment in Washington have so distorted the market for health insurance that a generation of Americans now look on medical coverage as something very different from other kinds of insurance that we buy. While we will pay several hundred bucks out of our own pockets to have a plumber come repair a leaky pipe, we'll balk at deductibles and a $50 co-pay for a doctor's visit. We've been schooled in this attitude by politicians who have mandated that health insurance do things that we'd never expect from other kinds of insurance, and by consumer advocates who will demand our legislators do something about a health insurance company that doesn't cover some optional procedure that has nothing to do with life and death.

Yeah, I think if more people had to actually pay out of their own pocket for some of this stuff they would demand that prices go down. Most of the time if you have insurance you have no idea what different tests and procedures cost.

If you had a high deductible plan and a certain amount put into a health savings account by the government that would be carried over from year to year it would be just like the Whole Foods health plan where you would be asking about every test to see if they were absolutely necessary.