Like most proposals it sounds great and promises to offer new options for those who presently have health insurance coverage and also for the 47,000,000 US citizens who are currently without insurance. In addition, it promises to lower your monthly premiums and give you increased security of cover. For people suffering from pre-existing conditions it promises to "end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or expectations of illness".

This plan to solve America's health insurance needs calls upon insurers to work collaboratively with patients and employers to offer a high standard of health care at a price which is affordable and also calls on government to reform the health care system in order to both increase the quality of care and reduce costs.

This of course is exactly what everyone wants to see but if it were really that easy why is the health care system in such a mess today and why are costs increasing rather than decreasing?

The fact is that this is merely the latest in a long list of proposals to sort out the health insurance system and is pie in the sky. In reality it is little more than a political document that is very well written and excellently presented and will no doubt to some extent achieve its objective, which is quite simply to drum up votes. It will not however do anything to improve health insurance because it is simple not based in reality.

Health insurance today is very big business and has very little to do with providing health care and everything to do with earning profits for the insurance companies. Now you can talk to the insurers all day long but, unless the government is willing to throw money at the problem then costs are not going to come down.

Anyone who has experienced private medical treatment carried out abroad will know only too well that a large portion of the cost of providing care in the US represents profits for the insurance companies and not the actual cost of providing care. You need only seek medical treatment in any of the many wonderful hospitals in the Far East to realize that you can get the very highest quality of care at a mere fraction of the cost of providing that same treatment in the United States. And if you think that the standard of treatment abroad is not as good as that in the States then think again because a lot of the hospitals in the Far East today are staffed by very highly qualified surgeons and doctors and have some of the most modern equipment to be found anywhere in the world.

It is all very well to talk about working with the providers to bring costs down but the truth of the matter is that it is not in their interests to do so. Costs will stay at their present high levels and indeed will continue to increase until the US government decides to take over the responsibility for the provision of the mainstay of health care in the United States.

MedicalHealthInsuranceToday.com provides information on all aspects of cheap health insurance as well as the problems of finding affordable health insurance for pre-existing conditions