The truth about Insurance

John Stossel is one of the few people at ABC News that doesn't make me puke.

He has a great story here about insruance.

The main problem with insurance is that what used to be an employment incentive/tax break now has become a "right".

People do not spend other people's money as well as they do their own. My favorite segment from this piece is:

Suppose you had grocery insurance. With your employer paying 80 percent of the bill, you would fill the cart with lobster and filet mignon. Everything would cost more because supermarkets would stop running sales. Why should they, when their customers barely care about the price?

Suppose everyone had transportation insurance. The roads would be crowded with Mercedes. Why buy a Chevy if your employer pays?

People have gotten so used to having "other" people pay for most of our health care that we routinely ask for insurance with low or no deductibles. This is another bad idea.

Suppose car insurance worked that way. Every time you got a little dent or the paint faded, or every time you buy gas or change the oil, you'd fill out endless forms and wait for reimbursement from your insurance company. Gas prices would quickly rise because service stations would know that you no longer care about the price. You'd become more wasteful: jackrabbit starts, speeding, wasting gas. Who cares? You are only paying 20 percent or less of the bill.

John Stossel hit the nail on the head with this one.

Jesse Jackson Jr. even wants to make health insurance a constitutional ammendment. He claims health insurance is a human right.

Insurance is a product. Socialization of health care doesn't make for high quality health care...it means mediocre care at best for all.