If you look at the words used in current health insurance debate, you find some interesting aspects often overlooked in the effort to reform the system and extend healthcare coverage to the uninsured.

First word – health

We used to refer to this employee benefit as “medical insurance” but today most people say “health insurance” instead. The original term made it clear that this benefit covered only medical care, not dental, vision, or mental health. I’m not sure why it changed, but the new term is a step in the right direction. It indicates that these policies provide benefits focused on health rather than medicine.

Well – some do, some don’t. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

Second word – insurance

By most definitions, “insurance” is a system of pooling a group of people’s periodic payments in exchange for promising to pay for specific future, potentially catastrophic losses. But today many of these medical policies cover health screening and preventive care, and some include other benefits designed to promote health rather than medicine. Even the health insurance companies have changed the way they talk about this system today – they are “health plans,” or companies that offer plans to pay for healthcare.

Perhaps this change in the words used in the debate will help us go back to looking at health insurance as just that – a pool of money to tap when we have one of those “potential future losses.” The “health plan” part, which covers primary care needs like exams, screening, and treatment of coughs, colds, and other such diseases, would be separate.

Maybe the words we use will help us see the way to solving some of the problems in our current healthcare system.