Most people don’t look at health care expenses like they do other expenses. First of all, hospitals don’t tell you how much things cost first. The nurse doesn’t say – would you like an aspirin – it will be $3.00. You get to find out about that charge after the fact – if you even see bill as a charge by charge summary at all. Also, very few people are going to ask if something is really necessary when it comes to taking care of a loved one. People just leave it up to the doctor’s judgment.

The insurance system doesn’t help either. People view using insurance similar to getting something for “free”. The more they use it – the more “free” stuff they get. If people were paying cash for all the services and prescriptions they would spend differently on healthcare.

Gas has been over $4 for a week or so around here, but a couple of days ago while driving to work I passed a station that was still changing $3.99. I was very tempted to turn into it, even though my tank wasn’t empty yet and it would make me late for work, just to get that deal. But I realized that this is only about a 4 or 5 cent/gal saving from my regular gas station near home. I probably wouldn’t be able to put more than 9 gallons in, so I’d save less than 50 cents.

I also agree with NielB’s point about these being prices that we’re intimately familiar with. We frequently hear news stories about things like the price of oil, the national debt and GDP, or the total amount Americans spend on health insurance. But these numbers are meaningless to us, because we have no frame of reference to them — most of us never purchase oil by the barrel. But when you hear about designer jeans costing $200, it’s easy to relate them to the $30 jeans you can buy at the Gap.

I live in Australia, and for years the supermarket chains have had deals with the gas station companies whereby if you purchase more than some amount (usually $30) at the supermarket, then your docket entitles you to a few cents per litre off at the bowser. People stick to these deals like a religion, irrespective of the increases in prices at the supermarket. It’s totally irrational, and totally fascinating.

Peter.

Anyway, part of what I gathered is that we freak more when we cannot predict something. Over and over again we are told that nobody knows how much oil is in the planet. Some say not enough and others say oil companies are liars. Meh, either way the consumer doesn’t know and every time we face that pump we face not being able to predict something.

But then it seems like there are even bigger unpredictable and possibly devastating things going down these days. And everyone I know is either vaguely stressed or specifically so. Perfect time to pull cons. The guy who comes up with the stress free oasis of thought wins I’ll bet. Oh wait, there are true apothecaries getting richer. I forgot.

Thanks for the note — I will blog about this tomorrow