A friend of mine once remarked that what consumers really want is health maintenance, not health insurance. With my car insurance policy, if, say, someone ding

A friend of mine once remarked that what consumers really want is health maintenance, not health insurance. With my car insurance policy, if, say, someone dings my bumper, I can decide whether it’s really worth pursuing a claim through the insurer or whether I should just settle with the other guy for a smaller amount of cash. Some people in the health insurance industry, thinking along the same lines, seem to believe that if I have a funny feeling in my chest, I should be making a judgement call about whether I should go to the emergency room (and suffer a copay if it turns out to not be an emergency after all) or take some aspirin and see if it gets better by itself. I think this is fundamentally the wrong approach.