I do believe a mystery has been solved for me this week.

For years, I've been trying to understand why anybody thinks it makes sense to pay insurance companies to write checks to doctors. I now learn, from Congressional hearing testimony, that this is supposed to be a system for financing medical care.

Presumably, the idea is to use the insurance policy as a sort of ongoing, secured loan — or something.

As a system of financing, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Normally, if you want to finance something — say, a car — you take out a loan for a certain amount of money. Before you sign on the dotted line, you know how much you've borrowed, what your rate of interest is, and how much your monthly loan payments will be.

In short, you know how much you've paid for what you bought.

When you take out a loan to buy something, your interest rates aren't dependent on your driving record or how old the car is or whether or not there are sufficient other people in your community who also have car loans.

There are no officials telling you that you are required to take out a car loan, even if you don't need one, so that your neighbors can afford to take out car loans, too.

And, once you've paid back the money you borrowed for the car, plus interest, you're done. You don't have to keep making monthly payments in case you want to buy another car down the road.

On second thought — no, it's still mystery.

I suspect we'd find, if we looked at it carefully, that most routine medical care does not need to be financed. By pretending that it does, we simply add to the cost and make medical care less affordable that it really is.

The only reason nobody seems to have figured that out yet is that nobody seems to have considered the notion that the way things are is not necessarily the way they have to be.

So, where's all that American ingenuity and innovative thinking we keep hearing about? Is this really the best we can come up with?

That's sad.