I think the health insurance industry is being unfairly pinned as the bad guy in this whole situation though. I think the real roots of our country's health care problems tend to come from several sources.

One, the people: The frivolous law suits for malpractice and other types of tort are a major drain on the health care system and result in dramatically higher health care costs across the board. Between the cost of malpractice insurance, and the amount of money spent on settlements in the various lawsuits against the health care industry, it becomes nearly impossible for them to charge any less than they currently do for health care.

Two, pharmaceutical companies. The absurd amounts of money that they are permitted to charge for their drugs is crippling to insurance companies and people alike. This issue is one that is much more difficult to solve in my mind, because in all honesty many of the advances made in health care are made by these companies, and they are able to make these advances because they make so much money off of their overpriced pills. Cut their profits on the prescriptions, and you cut how much money they have to spend on research, and eventually slow down the pace of innovation in the health care industry. I think more oversight in the industry, a shorter period of exclusivity on the drugs, and control of advertising could help dramatically, but may not be enough.

I won't say that the insurance companies are without fault, and that they don't participate in some unsavory practices. What I will say about that though, is that the oversight in that industry is considerably more strict than it is for pharmaceutical companies, or lawsuits. Much of what they do is forced upon them by the incredibly high prices of health care. If costs were controlled more effectively, then cost of insurance, and the numbers of people that the companies are able to extend coverage to would dramatically increase. The way the system works right now, the companies are forced to be extremely exclusionary in their practices just to make sure they are able to make a profit. Their profit margins are too slim to be able to extend coverage to more people than they already do. Fix the other problems, and provide a little more oversight to the insurance industry, and I think that the entire health care situation will dramatically improve.