It is supposed to work like this: Consumers don't like to take risks so they pay the insurance guys a fixed premium and the insurance guys promise to pay their medical bills when they get sick.

Which means that people who have health insurance may be sick but they won't be broke. Right?

Except for the wonders of US Style Health Insurance. In an article from the American Journal of Medicine, cited by Nicholas Kristoff in Sunday's Times we find that 78% of he people who had medical bankruptcies in 2007 had health insurance. Also Victoria Colliver reports in today's SF Comical that:

More than two-thirds of the 2.2 million Californians who reported being in debt due to medical expenses actually had health insurance when they incurred their debt, according to a study released today by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

So if you thought that Wonks Anonymous was just ranting in a recent posting. He is always ranting but this time he is right. Health Insurers are gradually rewriting policies so that consumers and health care providers pay for most medical bills and take most risk on themselves. In this brave new world health insurers are well paid to do nothing and almost the entire economics profession is praising all of this as a cutting edge innovation.