Medical Care?

After reading this article I realized how little I knew about health care and the associated costs. The points in the article make so much sense:

Paying for your health care directly means not paying for inefficient paperwork.

Spending your own money means one tends to shop for the best value, putting the market to work to bring down prices instead of relying on an insurance companys un-natural influence on prices.

To me relying on insurance for big-ticket items like say....kidney stone treatment and paying out of pocket for the little stuff is a great combination. I think the trouble is the current insurance policies aren't tailored enough to allow an individual to designate the level of coverage in this manner.

I wish I understood more about it.