A bigger question economically is why is the government involved in routine care? Why is a normal, expected out of pocket expense considered “insurance”, which by definition is a pooling of resources for coverage of improbable events?
Excellent point. Even more important is that covering all these routine maintenance expenses is very costly and jeopardizes any insurance plan's ability to provide affordable coverage for the really big, catastrophic expenses that few people earning much less than Rush Limbaugh can afford. Just look at auto insurance. If you want a $2,000,000 or $3,000,000 umbrella you can easily finance it by substantiallhy increasing your deductible, or you can go broke by keeping th low deductible and adding the umbrella.