John - You're being disingenuous. The "more" insurance you speak of is to provide affordable health insurance to the 50 million uninsured people. Yes, there are issues of costs raising when you add that many people to the pool and we need to find ways to slow the speed of our biggest societal expense. The challenge being pursued is finding a way to provide access to healthcare coverage to all Americans, a end result you also ignore.
The other aspect of insurance you so conveniently gloss over is the profit motivation inherent in insurance and how it impacts claims payments. The inefficiencies of this industry, which adds a considerable amount of each insurance dollar collected goes to wasteful administrative overhead spent on workers finding ways to exclude their obligation to pay.
One fundamental you also miss is how competitive pressure from a public plan would make profit driven companies more competitive by eliminating overhead that is mostly directed at the company's ROI, not the welfare of their customer.
Your simplistic analogies don't offer any educational benefit to your readers. Your case merely confuses the debate.

Re: TP
The 50 million uninsured that you speak of include a substantial number who are young, healthy and choose not to have insurance because they would rather spend their money elsewhere, a substantial number who are between jobs and will be re-insured within a few months, a substantial number who are eligible for existing government programs, but not enrolled. It is not known exactly how many people fall into these categories, but estimates commonly fall in the 50% range. And as George Will points out, if access is really the point, why not just hand the chronically uninsured cash directly for medical expenses, just as people receive cash for food in the “food stamps” program? As for Mr. Stossel's “glossing over” of the profit motive in the industry, you might consider re-reading the article. Much of it describes how a truly competitive market would affect the industry. As for a public plan providing needed competitive pressure, there are so many things wrong with that idea that I only have time to point out a few: There are hundreds of health insurance providers in this country. To say that we need one more to provide the needed competition is a little strange. Government is not capable of participating in the free market and behaving as a for-profit organization. The whole point of having a public plan is not to lower prices by increasing efficiency (The idea that government involvement in any industry would increase efficiency is ridiculous), but to artificially shift costs to those that can “afford” it. Mr. Stossel's ideas may be confusing to you, but they are not confusing the debate.

Dear Mr. Stossel:

This letter is rather long, but I hope you will bear with me as I take exception to a recent column you wrote and which appeared in my local newspaper.

I recently had a (recurring) bout of congestion. It was in my sinuses, my larynx, and my chest. The symptoms were extreme and would not go away. Finally I saw my primary care physician, who prescribed an antibiotic. Two weeks later I remained sick and went back. He gave me a different antibiotic and referred me to a pulmonologist, to be seen after the affects of the medicine had worn off, so the pulmo could see what was really going on. The lung doctor ordered chest and sinus X-rays, which showed that I had an asthmatic condition but no apparent infection. He prescribed two inhalants. Two weeks later my breathing was better but I was still coughing and congested. I went back to my original doctor and told him I thought I believed that I had a very determined bug and that my daughter, who is also a doctor in another city, suggested that X-rays show very little and that I should ask for an MRI, which I did. My doctor would not order the MRI but rather prescribed still another antibiotic, for a longer time. At this time I am fine.

I tell you all of this to see just how you would have addressed this temporarily debilitating illness, using the “free enterprise,” “consumer-driven” method you espouse. How would I “shop” for drugs…I could hardly raise my head. I waited for days to see a doctor, so I was being conservative. Also, my doctor treated me in an extremely conservative manner, as evidenced by his reluctance to order further tests. He did say that if I did not get well to come back and he would do so, so I was assured of whatever care I might need, but he did not waste resources.

In parts of the past I used to receive a (mailed) bill from the doctor, send a copy to the insurance company and receive reimbursement after the fact. In the meanwhile, I would sometimes wait to get the reimbursement before I paid the doctor. It was fairly simple to see what the charges were. Now, however, it is impossible to know what charges are incurred as they are being incurred, and impossible to decipher the various statements received following the date of service.

I challenge you to match up a medical bill to your insurance statements plus, in my case, the Medicare statement. It is impossible!!! Nothing matches! Now if you wish and have the time, you can personally go to the doctor's office or hospital or clinic and spend hours going over items with the business office, call Medicare and do the same, call the insurance company and do likewise. In such cases, which I have heard of from old people with nothing else to do, there are constant discrepancies, but who among us can take the time to do all this or have the knowledge to challenge prices?

Since you used the case of lasix surgery (which is of course, optional and not necessarily demanded) in your scenario, there is another medical matter that you or someone should investigate. I speak of hearing aids. This is a scam if ever there was one!

Every electronic device in existence has gone down in price. Every single one. EXCEPT!! for hearing aids, which have gone up unbelievably. Even my audiologist complains that hearing aid companies are out of control. So much for consumer-driven prices. Although one sees constant ads for hearing aids, which would indicate a fierce battle for business, I suspect that, as in the pharmaceuticals industry, more money goes into ads than into the research they claim to be paying for through exorbitant prices. This is a scandal affecting millions.

I won't go into details here, as my letter is already very long. I am sure you can find the facts yourself. However, just as a test, please put very tight plugs in your ears and attempt to live your life without sound. Your connection to others dries up, which is the very worst of it, the isolation. You cannot hear music, wind or rain or a car coming. Pretend that you cannot afford to pay $2,000 for each aid. (Yes, that is the going price for a quality, mid-range aid today. I had to make a loan to get mine, and they don't last forever either.) Remember too that there is no government help for this and remember that almost everyone becomes hard of hearing at some point, most to the point of deafness, without a hearing device.

I am grateful that even with a modest income I can manage to buy hearing aids and make my medical co-pays, but it is difficult. What about my less-fortunate neighbors? Is it a case of oh-well-too-bad-about-you-we-are-only-the-wealthiest-nation-in-the-world-so-of-course-we-can't-afford-to-extend-care-to-well, just-everyone!

There has got to be a better answer than what we have at the present. The statement that healthcare is not a citizen's right but a privilege is I believe barbaric and should be beneath the contempt of a democratic, civilized (compassionate?) society. Healthcare should be like a utility, available to all.

So, Mr. Stossel, how about bringing on something that would really work?

Re: TP Well said.

Re: margaret kendall
Mr. Stossel is not defending the current system as a free market system. He is describing the effects of employer paid or government paid insurance coming between the consumer and the provider and ruining the free market system. In markets where no such barrier exist because services are not covered by insurance(LASIK and plastic surgery), consumers and providers behave as free agents in a free market and prices fall. The medical services you discuss, including hearing aids, are covered by insurance and are subject to forces other than free market forces.
I am an accountant who currently handles my employer's health insurance plan. In the past I have audited companies' health insurance plans. Even with that experience, keeping up with my family's medical expenses, insurance claims etc. is a headache, just as you describe. The reason for that is because in the current system, most people don't care what anything costs; it feels like they are not paying for services, so why bother trying to keep up. The result of that is that providers and insurance companies aren't under any pressure to make things understandable. For the birth of my child, I received a statement from the hospital listing one line item and a $10,000 charge. They could have been charging me for some other patient's hospital stay, for all I knew. Presumably, this was normal procedure for this hospital, and most people just accept the bill. After all, they are only paying their $500 deductible anyway. What difference does it make if the balance that the insurance company pays is $950 or $9500.
Your personal experiences sound very difficult, regardless of the type of health care system that we have. But please read Mr. Stossel's article for what it says and not as a defense of the current system, which it is not.