John Stossel has an interesting piece about health insurance titled "Control Your Own Health Care." He argues that buying a high-deductible policy is just good common sense:

If people paid their own bills, they would likely buy high-deductible insurance (roughly $1,000 for individuals, $2,100 for families) because on average, the premium is $1,300 cheaper. But people are so conditioned to expect others to pay their medical bills that they hate high deductibles: They feel ripped off if they must pay a thousand dollars before the insurance company starts paying.

But high deductibles may be the key to lowering costs and putting you in charge of your health care.

Five years ago, the Whole Foods grocery chain switched to a high-deductible plan. If an employee has a sore throat or a sprained ankle, he pays. But if he gets cancer or heart disease, his insurance covers it.

Whole Foods puts around $1,500 a year into an account for each employee. It's not charity but part of the employee's compensation. It's money Whole Foods would have otherwise spent on more-expensive insurance. Here's the good part for employees: If they don't spend the money on medical care this year, they keep it, and the company adds more next year.

It's called a health savings account, or HSA.

CEO John Mackey told me that when he went to the new system, "Our costs went way down."

There's a major push now for mandatory health insurance, which I oppose for reasons I gave in an earlier post. Among my concerns were these:

...by what right does society have a right to make me (and everyone else) pay for what I do not want?

Then there's the coverage issue. What if I only want a major medical, catastrophic coverage type of policy which won't pay for ordinary health care. Shouldn't I be allowed to pay for less if I use less? And if so, then why shouldn't I be allowed to pay for none and use none?

For example, I have never bought a new car in my life, and while I have a television, I don't watch it and I could easily do without it. Such things are not necessities of life, rather, they are desiderata. The idea that my money should purchase a class of health care for other people better than that which I buy for myself makes about as much sense as saying that my money should pay for strangers' new cars or television sets.

So, it will be interesting to see the details of whatever mandatory health care plan the Democrats wish to impose.

It's bad enough to impose a plan which would wreck the health care system, but I hope they're not planning to make me buy for others what I don't buy for myself.

That adds insult to injury.

Might even be violative of the Golden Rule....