Why there is no car insurance crisis

I heard a talk show host recently express that there was really not a healthcare crisis, but there was actually a healthcare insurance problem. He then went to illustrate the way to solve many of the problems by comparing our healthcare insurance with car insurance. This is a paraphrase of that.

Consider the most recent car insurance commercial you've seen(the gecko of Geiko, the Progressive commercials, etc.). Consider what they talk about in those commercials. Good coverage AND good rate quotes or bargains are what they claim. Now consider any health insurance commercials you've seen. First, there aren't as many, and when they show up on the TV, they only talk about one side of the equation, good coverage/care. That is because the majority of folks don't shop around for health insurance and compare prices and specifics of the policy like they do with car, home owners, and life insurance. This is because most of us think only of getting our healthcare insurance through our employer, and much like the taxes withheld by our employer, we don't even think of the cost of this to us. We only care about our co-pays and the percentage of our coverage.

There are two primary things that I believe if changed about how we structure healthcare would have a huge impact in the right direction of making healthcare insurance affordable AND would keep and improve the current quality of the healthcare we receive.

1. Begin creating incentives for people to get their medical insurance independant from their employment. This will shift the awareness of "bang for their buck" to the consumer and will not cause people to slip into having no insurance when switching jobs.

2. Allow any persons from any states to purchase medical insurance from health insurance companies from any other state. This will free people from the heavy handed regulatory environment of many states and keep them from having to subsidize the costs of coverage that they themselves don't need. This is a more involved angle to healthcare costs that I don't have time to get into in this post. But for more info, click on the galen.org link on the post a couple of posts down.