The debate over health care reform has become insane over the past few months.

One side rails against “Obamacare," as if President Obama's health care plan is actually a form of nationalized or single-payer health care. Terms such as “death panels," complaints about taxpayer-funded abortions and endless debates are causing chaos at town hall meetings across the country.

The other side claims the broken system is due purely to “greedy.” Insurance companies screwing over patients, choose capital gain over morality.

Both sides are wrong. It’s time to bring some much-needed perspective to the issue.

While there is no mention of scary-sounding things like “death panels” and taxpayer-funded abortions in America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, there are still plenty of interesting provisions. With the public option gone, the bill that will likely be passed is pretty much just “insurance reform.”

The part referred to as “insurance reform”, among other things, prohibits insurers from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions, sets strict rules on premiums, expands coverage requirements and puts official caps on out-of-pocket expenses. The bill will also amend Title XVIII and XIX of the Social Security Act, revising Medicare and expanding Medicaid. Finally, it amends the Internal Revenue Code to impose new taxes on the uninsured and employers who refuse to cover employees.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats’ main reason for their versions of health care reform is that 47 million Americans are uninsured and desperately need coverage now.

Of course, what they don’t tell you is that that number is merely a Census statistic.

The Census Bureau merely provides demographic data in a nonpartisan manner, not to serve a Republican or Democratic agenda. “Uninsured” is framed in the simplest of terms, not necessarily because those people couldn’t afford insurance.

The truth is, only a fraction of the 50 million Americans actually cannot afford health insurance in the long-term and desperately need it at the moment. It may shock you, but 17 million of those uninsured have incomes of over $50,000 per year (9 million make over $75,000). About 10 million aren’t even citizens, so anyone concerned with illegal aliens receiving health care should cross them off the list. Another 8 to 10 million either don’t have health insurance because they are changing jobs and will regain it within 4 months, or are young people (18-30) who think they don’t need it, or are eligible for programs like Medicaid and have simply not signed up yet.

The actual number of needy, uninsured citizens who could not obtain insurance under any circumstance is somewhere between 10-12 million, hardly worth creating another expensive government program for.

In fact, if you think about it like an economist, regarding this bill and all the insurance mandates, Congress would have to be nuts to pass it.

First, the nation’s leading insurer, Wellpoint Inc., only had a profit margin of 4 percent as late as the end of last year, as well as about $2.5 billion in net income, despite receiving over $60 billion in revenue.

Second, one estimate says that there are about 13 million Americans with pre-existing conditions who are denied insurance.

Third, with the $5,000 per year cap on copays for individuals, if Wellpoint Inc. were to receive even one tenth of that number in new enrollees with pre-existing conditions, they would likely receive $6.5 billion in new revenues.

Fourth, with age, family and area being the only reasons for allowed under the bill for difference in introductory premiums, in some areas they may make a little more, and deductibles will help.

Fifth, considering that those with pre-existing conditions can cost insurers several thousands and sometimes even millions of dollars, even if every one of these patients spends only $6,000 per year on health care (if only the conditions’ treatments were that cheap), Wellpoint inc. would already lose $1.3 billion! Just imagine how much more of a burden it could impose on less-profitable insurers.

And finally, it’s not clear from the bill’s text just how much leeway insurers would be given to raise premiums to compensate for these new costs, but it doesn’t seem like it would be much.

That’s the problem with the Democrats’ approach to health care. Rather than looking at expanding health care access from an economist's or market expert’s perspective, they are looking at it from a purely normative perspective.

The bill’s mandates would treat insurers like charities rather than businesses, which is what they are, whether or not you choose to admit it.

It’s completely understandable from a cost-benefit perspective why insurers would not accept many folks with pre-existing conditions. Too many of them would likely force companies into bankruptcy.

One has to remember that when dealing with big economic questions, approaching it from a “compassionate” standpoint can cost us big time. Just look at Medicare and Social Security. Sure, those programs are considered some of the best programs in the U.S., but the people running them in Congress have been asleep at the wheel for far too long, and we will have a $50 trillion fiscal gap in the next several decades.

So while it may seem heartless to deny certain folks basic care, we have to remember the economics and not just call executives “heartless.”

So what would be a better approach? Letting the free market work, of course. Three easy ways would be to: (a) remove excessive coverage mandates and make coverage more voluntary based on individual patients’ situations; (b) make Medical Savings Accounts more accessible, as well as possibly increasing the annual limits; and (c) allowing the selling of health insurance across state lines.

These three techniques, from an economic standpoint, would free up the market and put power back into consumers’ hands, not government or insurance companies. After all, insurance is supposed to be for emergencies, not routine procedures. You don’t ask your auto insurer to pay for your gas if the price is high, do you? Obviously, even this plan has its naysayers. But, considering the failures of the other plans and laws that have been enacted in the past. Isn't worth trying something new for a change?

Solutions are especially crucial for college students. Young adults 18 to 24 tend to be least likely to have health insurance. Twenty-five percent of America’s college students are either uninsured or underinsured. In fact, a California Board of Regents study in 2000 found that unpaid medical bills was the No. 1 reason students dropped out. Larger or medium-sized colleges usually end up attempting to pick up the slack for students by assuring at least a minimum of coverage. Private institutions will no doubt have to pass these costs onto students in the form of higher tuition, and public ones, unless their states provide the necessary aid, will probably do the same.

Ultimately, though states all over the country may be expecting too much of health care and trying to micromanage it effectively seems like an impossible task. Trying to significantly lower costs/prices while increasing coverage and preventing prevalent rationing may be possible only to an extent. As anyone who’s studied health care can see, it is pretty much an inverse relationship. If we want to increase coverage, affordability will likely decrease. It is probably not much different in nations with single-payer systems, even though some tout them as “better” than the American system. One thing we can all agree on, though, is that there must be some reform.