Here’s your New Year’s resolution

I realize nobody keeps resolutions, but if you think you might get sick someday, I have one you should consider.

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While Obamacare might not be gone yet, now that nobody is forced to buy insurance, we are heading back to the days of free-market health care when you assumed your insurance covered something, when in fact the teeny, tiny print specifically stated it did not, so that the money came out of your nest egg.

But let’s not get negative. Let’s look at this as an opportunity! It’s an opportunity to test this idea that free market competition can drive down your health care costs down to such a level that insurance won’t matter that much.

All we have to do is learn to shop around for a hospital the way we shop for a car or a house, especially because the hospital could well cost more than either of those.

And the key here is to shop around before you get sick.

Because I’m told that one’s enthusiasm for comparison shopping tends to wane when you fall off a ladder or wake up with a gallstone.

So your New Year’s resolution should be to go to hospital websites and check the price lists. You’ll discover hospitals don’t have price lists. But some will let you request a price for certain procedures one at a time.

So you’ll want to resolve beginning next week to get started on planning out your illnesses and pricing the procedures you’re most likely to need. Yes, I realize there are something like 9,000 defined procedures, but if you stick with it, by the time you’re done, you’ll be on Medicare!

Problem solved.

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