Medical advancements are promising longer lives, but can we afford it? Health insurance has become so expensive that many people can no longer afford to purchase it. As costs continue to skyrocket, many of us wonder where it will all stop. At what point will we as a nation begin to do something about this problem?

The fact that health care costs are dizzyingly high should be enough, but the truth is that many of us really don't understand how health insurance works. What is a deductible and when does it reset itself? We don't know the differences between a PPO and an HMO, and many of us couldn't tell you which, if either, we have. With so many questions, there seems to be the need for some place to go for answers.

It is an understood fact that before drugs and medical equipment can be released to the market, it must be thoroughly tested by the FDA. Most of us expect medical procedures to cost a lot, but we also feel like they are costing too much and there's some unfairness there. Meanwhile, insurance companies seem to be getting richer and richer. More medications available on the market means doctors will prescribe them. And more than ever before, those prescriptions are for antidepressants.

There are hundreds of new drugs approved by the FDA each year and it seems crazy. How many ways can they reformulate the same ingredients into yet another product? How much more effective can this product be than the last one that was supposed to do the same thing? Just by turning on the TV or surfing the internet, one can hear the latest pitch for some medication with a quirky name which has been manufactured anew, just as the drug's own composition has.

While millions of Americans are slowly losing a battle to take care of their bodies both mentally and physically, the cost of health care continues to slink higher. Somewhere along the line, we let the basic necessity of having health care slip away from us, and now we wake up to the fact that for millions, health care is not an option, therefore we don't have it. This fact should not be the norm for anybody. As the ranks of the uninsured grow and become more vocal, hopefully things will start to improve.