A side benefit of using catastrophic health insurance instead of traditional health insurance is that families come to appreciate the real cost and value of the medical care they get. Instead of a system where the government, an employer, or an insurance company pays for regular doctor visits, with catastrophic health insurance, you pay for most routine medical services in cash. While this scares many who have become accustomed to the full-coverage medical insurance system, it is actually financially liberating to move toward an all-cash system. Using catastrophic health insurance is a way to ease into it financially while still having the peace of mind knowing that major medical expenses will be covered.

Single-payer health care (government run health care, and the various forms of it) simply hide the true cost of medical care. Think of it this way. If someone gives you a credit card to use at any car dealership of your choice with no limit on it, what are you going to do? Are you going to be thrifty and wise with someone else’s money, or are you going to take it to get the car of your dreams? Even if the car of your dreams is a practical one – a large SUV for a large family, perhaps – the fact that a third party is paying the bill is going to affect your choice of vehicles.

Now, let’s say the same person who handed you the all-expenses-paid credit card to buy the car, also told you it’s good for all the automobile maintenance you could ever want. Do you think that’s going to affect your choices in maintenance programs? Thosee of us who might change our oil ourselves, or ignore a few scratches per year in the paint, might suddenly choose to step up our maintenance expectations by having someone else do it, or taking it in for paint touch-up with every little scratch.

The point is, when someone else pays, it is human nature to worry less about costs. If everyone had catastrophic health insurance and cancelled their full-service medical policies, and the government got out of the health-care business (have you ever talked to a vet who things the V.A. health care system is the best in the world?), costs would plummet, people would regulate their usage of medical services to reasonable levels, and everyone would still be covered in case of emergency situations that are out of the ordinary.