America doesn’t have a health insurance problem. America has a health care cost problem, one that keeps getting worse because lawmakers keep treating the symptoms and the wrong disease.
Insurance premiums rise for one simple reason: the cost of care rises. Long before an insurance company ever enters the picture, prices are already inflated by defensive medicine, excessive lawsuits, and political promises of “free” programs that others eventually have to pay for. When the cost of care goes up, premiums follow. They always will.
Yet every time Congress proposes a “solution,” it focuses on insurance premiums or government subsidies. These approaches treat symptoms, not causes. They make for good “vote buying” speeches, but they do nothing to address the forces driving costs upward.
Three major cost drivers could reduce health care spending by nearly 50% if addressed honestly:
1. Defensive Medicine
Doctors today practice under constant threat of litigation. To protect themselves, they order every test imaginable, not because the patient needs it, but because the legal system demands it. This adds billions in unnecessary costs every year. A simple office visit often begins with an X‑ray or scan before the doctor even examines the patient. That isn’t medicine; it’s legal survival.
2. Out‑of‑Control Tort Awards
The legal environment surrounding health care encourages massive payouts, even for unintentional human error. No doctor, hospital, or pharmaceutical company can be perfect, yet society demands perfection and punishes anything less. These lawsuits drive up malpractice premiums, inflate hospital charges, and push providers into defensive behavior that multiplies costs for everyone.
3. The Fantasy of “Free Healthcare”
Programs marketed as “free” are never free. They shift costs into public budgets, increase demand without increasing supply, and create political incentives to expand benefits without addressing efficiency. When government promises more than the system can sustainably deliver, costs rise, and eventually land on taxpayers, employers, and insurance pools.
Until lawmakers stop chasing their next political win and start confronting these root causes, nothing will change. Insurance companies are not the villains; they are simply the final link in a chain of inflated costs created long before a claim is filed. Fix the system, and the premiums will fix themselves.
If this is my last post, I want all to know there was only one purpose for all that I have written; to have made a positive difference in the lives of others.
Anthony “Tony” Boquet, Solutionary and the author of “The Bloodline of Wisdom, The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary” and “The Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, A Devotional Timeline.