Paying for Medical Services

I am not particularly insightful, but sometimes I am prescient.

A couple of years ago, I was talking in a desultory manner with my wife about health care costs, and I said to her that it seemed to me that health care had become something that many people thought they were entitled to, at low cost, for whatever they wanted to have done. It didn't matter if it was major or minor, life-threatening or life-enhancing, functional or cosmetic, some people seemed to think that their medical insurance should entitle to all of it.

It occurred to me that perhaps we ought to be thinking about reserving medical insurance for the significant events, and not for the routine things. I knew that the routine things didn't mean routine costs, especially as you go down the socioeconomic ladder, or up the size of your family -- just getting flu shots for everyone can be expensive -- but it felt to me like that was the equivilent of expecting that your auto policy would pay for having your tires rotated (surely a desirable thing to have done) or your oil changed (ditto). It would, I guessed, at a high-enough deductible, but the general scheme of things seemed to be now that some folks thought it ought to pay for it and have a low deductible, too.

Dammed if I didn't see a writeup in a medical blog (DoctorMental) mentioning just that concept. Okay, DM does it better, and thats cool. I just hope that the concept catches on. I don't care all that much if it helps doctors stay in the business of medicine (desirable, but not my life's goal), but it might help us stagger out of this health care cost quagmire.

And that would be a good thing.