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Health insurance is expensive because it shields the consumer from healthcare's actual cost, while failing to emphasize "health."

Health insurance, were it truly aimed at keeping consumers healthy, would cover mainly catastrophic illness while containing more incentives for maintaining wellness. Such a system would serve the interest of both the consumer and payer and radically cut costs. As surely as Americans know to pay their taxes on April 15, they would know the ABC's of prevention.

But, of course, American health practices leave much to be desired, mirroring the lack of effective dissemination of health promotion and disease prevention information. Our poor health habits, in turn, necessitate more and more expensive medical interventions, which health insurance covers from A to Z, sending costs soaring.

The average annual health insurance premium for single coverage in 2008 was $4,704; family coverage cost $12,680 - both about 5% higher than premiums in 2007. Smaller firms with less than 199 workers had a lower average family premium of $12,091 compared to larger firms (over 200 workers), with an average family premium of $12,973.

Add to that the ever-increasing co-pays and deductibles courtesy third-party payer cost-shifting, and the situation is, well, catastrophic.

So call "health insurance" for what it is: third-party healthcare financing, insulating the consumer from the true costs, thus encouraging greater consumption, with inefficient government paying the lion's share, further distorting and bloating the U.S. healthcare economy - an economy that in 2003 spent $5,711 per capita, the highest in the world, with less than stellar health outcomes.

At the same time, given our medical advances, we are victim of our own success. As U.S. medicine surged forward diagnostically and therapeutically, costs likewise surged, surpassing $2 trillion in 2006 - 10% for prescription drugs, the biggest contributor to the growth of U.S. health costs and insurance.

World War II set the stage for this inflationary spiral when Congress circumvented the wartime wage freeze by making health insurance benefits tax-deductible for corporations only, which, in turn, incentivized costly "Cadillac" health plans. This arrangement encouraged healthcare consumption free of worry over cost and unhealthy habits. It's the factory model embedded in our modern psyche. You go, go, go, and if you start to fall apart, you're made new courtesy generous benefits and a miraculous healthcare

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