Excerpt: It's easy to understand the appeal of these policies to politicians and business owners, who are scrambling to find ways to insure people amid escalating costs. But consumers need to ask hard questions about what they're really getting for their money and read the fine print of any policy they're considering. 'I could cover everybody for a dollar a head, but the policy wouldn't cover a toothbrush,' says Karen Pollitz, a research professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University.

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