It seems Americans are insurance poor. Everything is insured - the house, the cars, the kids, and now people are even insuring their pets. But why does health insurance have to cost literally 'an arm and a leg?' Companies and small businesses seem to break-the-bank in order to try and give their employees a good rate on their health insurance, and self-employed people - well, they can just forget about getting ahead financially.

My question is 'why?' Do health insurance providers feel that there is such a monopoly on health coverage that the competition is merely too weak to fear, thus, providing less coverage for more money? To me, the competition is fierce with Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Health, and Kaiser to just name a few. But who decides how much health insurance is going to cost? What exactly is the formula that is used to figure the amount year to year? As the economy financially grows shouldn't the price of health insurance lower? It would seem with more money coming in economically the cost of premiums would reduce as well as the overall cost to be insured?

But what about population growth? With more people tapping into the health insurance pool it could stand to reason that with their income supporting the health insurance provider every month the cost would go down - the more people the less it costs? It doesn't seem to be working quite like that however. It seems with population growth the cost of living increases, consequently, going in the opposite direction than it logically should.

If I want to get a pizza for 4 friends, but I don't want to pay for it all, I would ask the other 4 people to pitch in equally. Now, with their money plus my money, I'd be paying less for the pizza than if I bought it myself. The more people 'pitching in' the more cash flow, the less I pay out of pocket, the happier we'd all be.

Not only are we paying tons of money for health insurance, there is also prescription costs on top of that. Co-pays are outrageous and they seem to be going up every 6 months. If I have insurance, and I pay every month for that insurance, shouldn't I pay less money or no money at all for prescriptions? It's a double standard coming from the health care provider. There should be large and bolded words on every health care provider's application reading: 'Now that you have paid for your health insurance you are completely covered....well almost....but not really.' There should be a disclaimer stating that applicants may want to consider taking a few trips a year to Canada.

Not only is the cost of insurance a big problem in American, the lack of knowledge by the provider is horrific. If I pay for an insurance plan with my own money I want to choose what doctors and hospitals I go to for care, not my insurance company. How do they know what I need in terms of my health? I had physical therapy a few months ago, the insurance company began cutting my monthly visits down month after month, saying I should be fine to quit soon. How do they know if I am fine to end the therapy? Last I checked none of the health care providers had an 'MD' after their names. It's pretty bad when the doctor can't override a request from the insurance provider. After all, he is the one who went through med school.

And what is the government doing about all of this? It's about time for them to step in and help regulate high health insurance costs. No more excuses; change is what we need! But whether we get it is up to them, for we ride on the low end of the hierarchic pole- it's usually God, the government, health insurance, the doctor and than us.