Ignorance in Health Care

While I cannot claim I am fully up-to-date with the debate on health care reform, I think I can claim with reasonable surety that most other people are not, either. After reading 7 or 8 recent news articles about it, I still feel somewhat in the dark. The issue is convoluted and disorganized. I really liked this NPR article which discusses the disorganized chaos of it all, pointing out that the millions and millions of young people who were so vigorous in supporting Obama on the web and streets are now nowhere to be found; the article sarcastically remarks about many of those pro-Obama young people: "The diss on you was always that you were infatuated with Obama's charisma and with vague notions of "change"—not with the long slog of political engagement. That isn't true, though, is it?"

In reality, most young people are ignorant about this issue because they are under their parent's policy and thus don't care. In all honesty, it's only because I got married and we are expecting a baby that the hard reality that life and especially health care are expensive dawned upon me.

But you know what? Most older people are ignorant about it, too. Why? They get insurance through their job. It has been surprisingly difficult to assess what kind of premium is reasonable to pay in insuring a young couple expecting their first child. When I ask around, almost everyone has no idea what their health insurance premiums really are because the costs are hidden behind work benefits. To me, this is the obvious problem about our health care system. When the majority of insured Americans have never done their research about what policy with what coverage is economically sensible for them and their family, it makes sense health care is broken. If the kind of car Americans drove was similarly a packaged benefit of their job, would be see the variety that we do today? We don't let someone else decide what kind of car we drive or what kind of car insurance we get; why do we let someone else decide what kind of health insurance to have?

To me the problem is that health care is not functioning like a capitalistic free market nor is it functioning like the socialist government run systems in Europe. Instead, it is somewhere in between. In socialism, people let the government do a lot of thinking for them, but now people are letting their employers do the same. With the government squeezing in on one half of health care and most of America being force fed the other half by their jobs to the point where all creativity, awareness, and competition has stagnated to nothing.

Any thoughts?