Individual Health Insurance Costs Highlight Problems With U.S. Health Care System

High "costs for the most mundane of medical conditions" for U.S. residents who have individual health insurance highlight "why the U.S. health care system is in such miserable shape," San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus writes in an opinion piece. Lazarus writes that more than 16 million U.S. residents have individual health insurance, rather than employer-sponsored coverage. However, he adds that -- according to Kevin Grumbach, head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco Medical School -- "Unless you can show you have a pristine state of health -- found more in theory than in nature -- they'll find a way to jack up your premiums." Lazarus cites a Kaiser Family Foundation study prepared by the Georgetown University Institute for Health Care Research and Policy that followed a number of hypothetical consumers through the individual insurance application process with actual insurers. Study co-author Karen Pollitz said that how insurers decide how much each policyholder will pay is "absolutely not scientific," adding, "It's totally a crapshoot." Lazarus also profiles Duane Vickrey, a California resident who "persisted in seeking an explanation" for a surcharge to his health insurance premium rate and later received the standard rate after he complained. Vickrey was "troubled by how arbitrary the whole decision-making process appears," according to Lazarus. Lazarus writes, "This couldn't be the way our health care system was intended to work" (Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle, 9/2).