The high costs of health care are often cited by health insurers to justify the high cost of insurance. But it is vital to understand why the cost of health care is so high. The answer is simple
government regulation. Hospitals, pharmacies, private practices, big pharma, and the myriad of material suppliers for all things medical are subject to federal regulation and government bureaucracy in one way or another. The medical field is a highly professional one and has the ability to self regulate and does so. Additional government requirements do little but add cost and reduce efficiency. The Cato Institute (2004) estimated that 256 billion dollars per year where lost to the government regulation of health care alone. So it appears the government is very concerned with the high cost of health care that the government itself has created. I would suggest that the agenda of our current government is only to grow and keep growing every fiscal cycle. It is not interested in actually solving problems but simply with going through the motions and making excuses.
The free market fee-for service model is the best one. This model requires the day to day visits to your family doctor would be paid by you directly to your doctor. The same goes with prescription drugs. Insurance is only use for catastrophic coverage, meaning an injury or inpatient illness/prolonged disease. This has a twofold benefit, first it makes sure there is no one between your family doctor and you. Second it ensures you have coverage when you need it and it greatly increases the effective risk pool for insurance companies. This plan may sound untenable today but consider that we could save 250 billion dollars a year by getting the government out of health care. Additionally we could bring down liability costs on health care providers through careful tort reform that reduces physician liability to frivolous lawsuits and allows for a contract between a doctor and patient that is a legally binding waiver of liability. We could also allow health insurance companies to operate across state lines, many companies already do but they are forced to have technically separate companies in each state they operate which are another regulatory burden and results in increased administrative cost which means higher premiums or lower coverage. If these goals could be realized I dont think it unreasonable to one day return to a private free market solution to health care.