One result is that many Americans reach adulthood, or even seats on congressional committees that oversee federal health programs, with only a hazy idea about the difference between a pre-existing condition exclusion in a health insurance policy and medical underwriting.

For example, about 7.5% of consumers are so utterly lost they think a health plan deductible is the total amount of medical expenses the plan will cover each year.

I think the solution is that states should require that every child in a public school in America get at least one hour of classroom instruction explaining what insurance is, how it's supposed to work, how it's regulated, what insurance agents and brokers are, and where consumers should go when they have problems with insurance policies or insurance agents.

Good high schools should build student-run pencil and notebook insurance plans into the math or social studies curriculum.

All students should get $2 in nickels and be required to contribute some of the nickels to pay for pencil and notebook insurance for a month. They should get to choose whether to use the rest to self-insure or to buy voluntary insurance.

At least one day during insurance unit month, each kid should get to help serve on the pencil and notebook money insurance administration team, and work on processing and adjudicating claims from students who lost or forgot their pencils or notebooks. They could then sell replacement pencils and notebooks to the students who received plan benefits.

Spending a day or two administering the claims filed by chronic pencil and notebook forgetters might give the students some idea of how the people at the insurance companies see the world.