[mindslight]

Ding ding ding! It's not really health insurance, it's a protection racket based on the threat of price gouging and financial attack by billing computers spewing paperwork. But if you're just willing to pay this monthly fee, then they'll be so kind as to only require you to pay the actual cost of your services.

If healthcare reform was to fix anything, it should have mandated up-front all-inclusive pricing for well-defined services, set a percent-above-average cap on emergency services, and eliminated all of the parasitic billing middlemen that bring only opacity to the system. It needs to be reasonable for people to pay routine costs out of pocket, and only then can you have actual insurance for the unexpected. Instead, it just created a penalty for failing to patronize the existing protection racket! Although this wasn't too surprising - it's the expected fate for any grassroots movement that gains traction with professional lobbyists.

This Surgery Center of Oklahoma looks fantastic, but I'm nowhere near Oklahoma and it doesn't look like they do routine care etc. Is this one isolated voice, or perhaps part of a larger trend that I'm just out of touch with?