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From the Alliance

It’s Time to Get Comfortable with the Terms of Health Care Insurance

It seems to me that what really is the problem in health care is paying for it, and clearly the “rub” is that people don’t want to pay for it.

They want someone else to pay for it. Folks think they probably need to chip in a monthly premium and from there, well, insurance companies pay for it all. Or the government does.

I can’t tell you the number of times at our family’s business when an employee would say “oh insurance pays for that.”

No. They don’t. Insurance companies just finance the deal and what factors go into that deal are very important to price.

Like buying a house – if you want granite counter top, that’s extra.

You want four bedrooms instead of three, that’s extra.

Make sense?

My friend Avik Roy, columnist at Forbes, describes it more closely in this column.

Now that we are once again engaged in the nuts and bolts for reforming or replacing or repealing the Affordable Care Act, it’s good to get comfortable with the terms. Roy’s article does that.