In an effort to curb costs to both consumers and insurance companies alike, legislators are starting to look at prescription drug companies and evaluate ways to make affordable health insurance more readily available to all Americans.

One recent example is that of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who signed into law one of the nation's most aggressive limits on gift giving to medical professionals by prescription drug salespeople. The idea is that inflated drug costs are crushing affordable health insurance plans, and that by minimizing the ways that prescription drug companies seek to woo medical professionals fewer overpriced and sometimes unnecessary drugs will end up getting prescribed.

According to Boston.com, this new law also promotes electronic medical records keeping in doctors' offices, requires state university to graduate more primary care doctors, and even allows supervisors to hold hearings when health insurers try to raise their premiums.

Overall, the goal is to provide more primary care doctors (and fewer pricey specialists), to better organize health care in general, minimize prescription drug costs, and make affordable health insurance more available to state citizens.

This should also ease some of the costs of enforcing medical coverage in Massachusetts, which is a legal requirement. By making affordable health insurance a reality, more people will be able to purchase individual policies, and rely less on the state to subsidize their coverage.

Massachusetts' law requiring coverage has proven far more successful than previously predicted, leading to much higher costs for the state. But, as legislators make clear, revising health care isn't going to be a quick or easy process; instead, as we're seeing it will take time and considerable effort to find just the right balance between what the state can pay, and what the citizens can pay for themselves.