Can you anticipate your health care needs?

Task a day insurance--nobody can. We can plod through day by day and in our souls know that we cannot predict our health care needs. The goal is to preserve accessible, affordable and quality health care for those times we need health care. However we cover the "if" that happens to us is what all these years of insurance premiums are about. In pursuit of our priority, we have supported the entire medical provider industry and the entire health insurance industry. We are the backbone. However, if the cost of either one of these two or both is too much, we cut out the supporters of the entire health industry. The task of the day is a mental one--Regardless of your health, habits or circumstance, you are essential for both the medical provider and health insurance industry, you are the customer. We are not running a charity worrying about their bottom lines, we are the customer. "Empowering" the consumer demands only that we remember we are the customer. No justification can stop us from saying "no" or "yes" to supporting the business of medical providers or the business of medical insurance. (In Massachusetts, the formula has changed, you are required to be a customer, though being enforced as a tax penalty for no insurance, MA has in fact created a mandatory health insurance tax, some will pay it through premiums, others through penalties by the state of MA. As taxpayers, I hope that there will be provisions for insured representation in the insurance department and health care provider regulators of the state (such as physician licensing boards perhaps enacting caps on physician fees?) otherwise MA has reverted to its old taxation without representation and we know what happened there.