Great personal story by Terry Heaton about his facing surgery without health insurance. His story demonstates something that I think is very important as we try to redirect or stall the skyrocketing increases in health care costs -- patients taking responsibility for understanding the costs of health care, becoming engaged in the payment process and negotiating for health care services.
Third party insurance payors relieve all of us from the worry of "what health care costs" until that time when we don't have health care coverage. As consumers -- we spend more time researching prices and quality on buying the latest electronic product on Amazon than we do when we make health care choices on which doctor to see, what hospital to be admitted to or what home health or DME company to use.
