BOSTON -- It is a provocative idea: that we could buy health insurance by selecting the specific options we want -- from coverage and doctors to deductibles and prices.

Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger has spent 30 years studying and writing about health care. She asks: Why shouldn't consumers take the money their employer most often spends to purchase health insurance and buy it themselves?

"In part, our cost problems are because people don't know about what is good cost value for the money," Herzlinger said.

She points to the way Americans buy automobiles. When all makes, models and options are considered, there are more than 2,000 choices in all. A trip to the supermarket, even, presents more than 42,000 options. And, Herzlinger said, consumers are perfectly capable of making the selections that are best for them.

"What am I asking for?" she said. "I'm asking for the kind of information I can get on a package of yogurt. How good is it? What does it have? I don't have that information about the quality of doctors and hospitals."

Herzlinger said that under her concept of consumer-driven health care, the federal government would have a strong role to play. It would be charged with enforcing transparency, so consumers get all the details, statistics and information they need to make informed insurance purchases. Further, the government, she said, should prosecute anti-trust or monopolies, as well as fraud and abuse.