Insurance Sucks

Apparently John Stossel has made the jump from ABC News to Fox (can Jake Tapper be far behind? If I were ABC, I'd want to keep him just for some token credibility).

Listening to John on Health Care Reform this morning, I heard him put something as succinctly as I've heard it put --

... it compounds the basic problem of saying "the answer is more insurance". Because insurance ... sucks, as a form of capitalism. It's a necessary evil, it's necessary risk-pooling. But it makes people not care about what things cost. And that makes prices rise. That's why lasik eye surgery prices are dropping, but things covered by insurance companies go up.

That's the money quote. As an aside, he went on to say:

The one useful thing that insurance companies do is to apply incentives, like charging a Lindsay Lohan more, charging you less if you take driver's ed or the insurance companies charging somebody less if they have a stone house with good fire detectors. But the current rules means that the health insurance companies can't reward you quit smoking or diet. It takes away the good pushing of incentives that insurance can do.