Okay, not to confuse anyone with common sense or facts, but let's try and make a little headway
in the Sea of Confusion now being churned up in the healthcare "reform" debate.  I’ll begin with
a few some simple assumptions:

1.  If someone has no personal responsibility to control costs, they won't.  This is a core
problem with the healthcare in this country.  The patient (us) has no stake in simply asking what something costs before or after using it, as the real “customer” is the insurance company.  They get the bill except for a tiny deductible or co-pay.  Therefore we have no idea what the real charge is and at the same time, no incentive to ask.

2.  Absent this incentive to control costs, the true incentive becomes to "game the system" and get as much as you can for "free".  In other words, since we have no idea what the charge really is all we see in practicality is the benefit and therefore we try and get as much as we can without regard to what it costs.  Every time we see the doctor we want to be seen, coddled, treated, medicated, and taken care of so that we don't have to lay out another tiny co-pay for the same problem again.  This inflates the bill to the insurance company.

3.  Without a significant financial disincentive, we will see the doctor as much as we like.
I know that this is not Politically Correct, but there are a lot of hypochondriacs out there.  Since all they have to pay is the tiny co-pay, they run to the doctor for things that are either imaginary or would just go away on its own if they got some rest and drank plenty of water.  This creates lots of unnecessary costs and paperwork.