Health insurance companies are in business for one purpose: to make money. Why do we need them? Well, many would argue that it keeps other people from paying if you get sick and go to the doctor but can't afford to pay for it. This is a false belief. If I pay $120,000 into my insurance company over the course of my policy and I then end up in a hospital and run up $1 million of doctors bills, I have not paid for myself. No, the other people who have paid into the insurance company and not used their policies ended up paying for me.

If I could afford health insurance, I would certainly pay for it. So, perhaps I am being a little hypocritical. Why would I pay for insurance? Because it does spread out high costs over long periods of time, and I personally don't mind paying for other people. Every time we have had insurance in the past, we paid more for our insurance than we did for healthcare without insurance. This is a simple fact. Do we use healthcare as much without insurance- probably not. Surgeries are delayed until we can afford them. Still with a $6000 deductible, we would probably have to do this anyway. Visiting the doctor is never delayed when it is needed.

Insurance, in general, adds much too the cost of health care. First, the people at the insurance company have to be paid. Second, the people at the doctor's office who file insurance and work with insurance companies on costs and how much they are going to get for each procedure- have to be paid. Finally, insurance companies have been getting worse and worse about denying claims even for necessary items. That means than instead of simply filing paperwork once, time and money are lost in the appeal process. If anything insurance companies, including government plans like Medicaid and Medicare add to the cost of medical coverage.