FIX this, every American citizen should be entitled to health care, education, and social security.. Period. This is a must. Somehow we have lost sight of the good for all, and only what is good for me.

I myself just went through surgery for diverticulitus. I have an employer provided high deductible plan and contribute to an HSA. I’m also covered by my husband’s employer provided insurance. Total cost of my surgery, doctors, drugs, came to roughly $60,000.00 and that was only 4 days in the hospital. My max out of pocket is $8,500.00 for in-network coverage which this procedure was. If it had been out of network, that figure jumps to $33,500.00 I have yet to read or hear what anyone considers “affordable”. My primary care doctor had dropped out of my United Healthcare plan because they paid him so little. The only other medical insurance plan that paid less was the state plan.

Massachusetts has mandatory health insurance coverage and they have seen no reduction in the use of the emergency rooms. They still have many people who are uninsured and cost of the plan has tripled since its inception.

The Obama administration and Congress are ignoring the facts. Honestly…how can anyone say that adding 45 million people to the healthcare system will not impact the quality of care. It defies logic.

Also, my personal experience with my brother going through the VA system was an absolute nightmare!! Horrible, horrible treatment…we finally had to search out real CARE for him in the private sector..thank GOD it was there as an option..doctors took his Medicare and treated him like a person, not a number. He would not have survived the VA but maybe that was their intent in ignoring him — since under government budgeting he was “not cost-effective”. He, too, had a preexisting condition and they wrote him off. He lives today because of private care.

Yes, I do pay high insureance payments and yes, I do, treat it as a service — I can go to the doctor when I decide to go, I can choose what doctor I want to go to — I don’t have to take what I can get, long waiting times, not the same doctor, etc. which I have seen my friends who have elected less costly insurance suffer through – even in cancer situations – through HMO’s (developed about ten years ago by the government) where people do not get the care they need upfront because of costly treatments and they die because they couldn’t qualify for costly treatment and they probably could have been saved…so

Government health care, submit your number and wait in line — nor for me, not for the health of this country…I don’t want to see any of us listed as a number and, subsequently, as not “cost-effective”.

Can the health care system in the US be improved? YES!

Will the governments make it better? NO!

Last poll 8/7 – 68% of Americans or pleased with there health insurance. Thats reality.

The government already controls a very large chunk of the healthcare infrastructure in the US. Much of the damage to our system is the direct result of the government programs that exist today. Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA system already account for close to half of the cost of healthcare. And all of those programs are failures.

Medicaid is the healthcare program for the poor and was established in the mid 1960’s. It is a dismal failure. Very few quality physicians accept Medicaid patients mostly because of very low fee schedules. Medicaid pays about 10% of a doctor’s charges. The program does not allow the doctor to charge the Medicaid patient the difference. So, the doctors who do accept Medicaid in their practice have to overcharge the patients with private insurance or no insurance. Access is poor for this group, and many seek primary care in emergency rooms because they have no doctor. Hospitals are not permitted to turn away emergencies, and Medicaid pays them much less than their costs, so they too have to cost shift.

More physicians are dropping out of Medicare every day, or severely limiting the number of Medicare patients they see because of declining fees and increasing administrative cost of participation. Cost shifting occurs for doctors who see this group as well. Virtually ALL Americans over 65 are on Medicare. THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS FOR MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS OVER 65. And the federal government charges the elderly for coverage. With no free market competition available, the elderly are in effect “taxed” for their healthcare. In addition, Medicare beneficiaries need to pay for Medi-gap policies through private insurers to pay the large deductibles and co-pays that Medicare doesn’t pay. My dad, who is a healthy 88 year old, pays over $6,000 per year in health insurance premiums, including the amount deducted from his Social Security for Medicare premiums, (Part B and Part D), and for AARP Medi-Gap insurance. So, the wonderful government run program that provides so called “free health care for the elderly” costs retirees a VERY large portion of their retirement income every year. And it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find quality doctors to care for them because of this “wonderful” government-run health insurance program.

The quality of care in the VA system is akin to that you would find a third world country. The VA system accounts for a relatively small portion of the healthcare system, but the quality is abysmal. Veterans with no other options are forced to use this system. It is TOTALLY government owned and operated, and the facilities and equipment are antiquated and the personnel sub par. No one would elect to go to a VA hospital if they had other insurance.

The only part of the system that actually works is the private health insurance market, and the services that are provided through that portion of the system. The health insurance industry is fraught with overlapping, complicated federal and state regulations that stymie competition and increase costs. We do need reform. We need to REDUCE government involvement in the healthcare system, not increase it.

The increasing cost of health care is the result of increased technology, life saving drugs, government bureaucracy and malpractice awards. But even with our fractured system, Americans have better health outcomes than any other nation. We can control the cost of healthcare by doing three things:

1. Do away with government run programs and give vouchers to seniors and the poor to purchase private insurance;

2. Decrease regulations, facilitate multi-state insurance policies to encourage competition; and

3. Implement serious tort reform.

In short, let the private free markets do their jobs. The fact that the Washington crowd refuses to consider giving up their government paid “best-in-the-world health insurance” in exchange for what they are proposing for the rest of us, should give everyone a clue. The elitist, Marxist, crowd now running Washington should cause every red blooded American to stand up and take notice. Become informed, and KNOW WHO YOU ARE VOTING FOR!!

Hopefully, its not too late to change the course of this country.

Explain in simple terminology how a $5300 dollar tax credit can cover a policy that costs $12000/year minimum.

Same for HSA’s that also do not approach adequate levels of healthcare. Also the Fact that HSA’s are for out-of pocket costs anyway and are therefore MORE expensive. Again inadequate to the problem.

Consumer-driven health care? Such a vague term. Insurance tells you to pay a certain amount or else:
1) go somewhere else
2) deal with it.

Consumers do not force insurance to lower costs, insurance forces you to pay their prices at their dictation. There is no consumer driven healthcare. Insurance tells your doctor what tests to perform and what drugs to proscribe, how long your doctor visit is, and what illnesses they will or will not cover. Those decision are not in the hands of the consumer ever. There is no negotiation or bartering involved in pricing, They tell you what to pay and when to pay it and if you don’t like it tough. How is that consumer driven? The consumer has no power against corporate America because insurance monopolizes an industry vital to life and longevity. They dictate rather than negotiate and they have no incentive to do so. They have no incentive to lower prices because, like it or not, insurance is swiftly becoming a neccessary possession and not having insurance leaves people and families bankrupt. (mike might say there are no medical bankruptcies ever like conservatives argue).

And the reason for my anger towards conservatives is simple. It is the conservatives who have stopped reform for the last 30 years at least. It is conservatives who are engaged in selling us out to insurance and their lobby. The healthcare reform issue is dead anyway because mainly conservatives are delaying until it goes away yet again for another 4-8 years and beyond. Moderates aren’t against reform, liberals are noty against reform, only conservatives are against reform. therefore conservatives are the correct target for the anger and frustration that I and *)% of the nation feels when dealing with the issue of healthcare. America knows things are broken and that insurance has us over a barrel, and mostly it is only the conservatives who are trying to say that the system is fine as is and “nothing needs to be done”, or “things will work themselves out”, or “free-market competition will control costs and price”. All of which hasn’t happened yet and we have operated from a free-market competative model for over 200 years now and NO change. Regulations? sure they exist. They have have a slight impact in controlling cost. As it stands there can only be so much percentage change in pricing per year, without it? Un-fettered price hikes. They have what we REQUIRE not what we want,not what we would like to have, but what we MUST have. They in essence blackmail consumers into buying insurance at their price and at their consent, and after buying insurance they will tell you how you use that insurance. If I gpo into a store and purchase an item or service, that service or item is mine to do with as I see fit. Now if you go to the store and by a shirt, then the store tells you that you can only wear that shirt on a spewcific day and undert specific circumstances and that violating these requirements will cause themn to re-posses the shirt, you would be an idiot to buy that shirt at that store and go somewhere else. Yet when EVERY store adopts the same policies as the rest, then you lose and buy the shirt because you MUST.

I am so frustrated with people who tell me that I and my life experiences don’t matter.(Mike).
I am more frustrated that yet again nothing will get done and we as a nation get worse and worse. Reform will cost more the longer this is dragged out. The time for action is now,(this year or hopefully early next), but I’m not holding my breath. Like space operations there are few windows that we have and putting off the issue only makes the issue more difficult, complicated, more expensive and more entrenched.

Insurance is laughing at everyone, rubbing their hands and waiting for the next round of price hikes. Dreaming over maintaining and expanding their monopoly. Insurance is LOVING the conservatives today because they know that they will increase their profit margins another 2 or 3 hundred percent, and still we will roll over and pay it.

Does de-regulation not mean that buisnesses have more ability to raise prices without notice or cause? Does de-regulation not allow buisnesses to set quality standards for themselves rather than adhere to standards “regulated” by the government or other force?
Then Common sense and historical fact shows that deregulation DOES lead to higher prices. If you truly think that insurance doesn’t charge triple premiums to high-risk groupd, (and poverty itself is a high risk group because health in general is directly impacted by financial wealth and standing), then you haven’t read basic factual information concerning insurance pricing.
If you truly wish you can ignore how many people are dropped after years of paying into the system but that doesn’t change the fact that these things DO occur, are widly known to occur even governemnt admits that it occurs and getting government to admit anything is worse than pulling teeth, are admitted as occuring by insurance companies themselves.

Yes prices go up when insurance is told they can do what they please. Premiums don’t go down they only go up. You insurance company isn’t going to send you a rebate because they drop their prices mid month but they will bill you mid month for increases to premiums.

Even conservatives in government have admitted that premium rates have risen 300% faster than wages. If you can’t trust your on conservative politicians then you won’t beleive me.

I apologize that I have imposed reality upon your world and shown how harsh and yes, UNFAIR, the system is, I am very sorry that you feel I have no right to express my opinions here, That my life experiences are either too emotional, or flat-out false and that I should stop whining over it.

Free-market is a proven failure. We have operated with a free-market for YEARS now and yet the problem remains. If free-market solutions were the answer, the situation would have been resolved long ago. Scince that is NOT the case and healthcare continues to erode, free-market obviously doesn’t work. That is common sense— a lot more persuasive than any opinion.

I have read these “free-market” solutions… (tax-credits, allowing across-state shopping, HSA’s) and none of them deal with reality. They are great ideas but when seen through the lens of real world events and consequences – they are all ineffectual.
1) tax-credits do not cover one third of yearly healthcare costs, and meanwhile destroys credit ratings across the board thereby making escaping poverty, in general, just that much harder.
2) HSA’s are limited in the amounts allowed to be saved ($7500/year),and again that limit is in-sufficient to covering yearly healthcare costs
3) shopping across state-lines,I got excited and hopefull about this until I realized that all the insurance companies will do in that event, is raise all policies, regardless of state, to the same level of cost and with the same benefits across the board. That negates any advantage of cross-state shopping. Again Common Sense.
What will not happen, (because it never has), is that the states with high prices will reduce cost to a standard level to retain sales in-state. It won’t matter.
BC/BS of Tennesse is just one of fifty subsidiaries of one insurance company. The home buisness at BC/BS will standardize all costs or even eliminate state offices and just have BC/BS of America with a single high premium, and a singlular benefit package. That is the obvious buisness response to such “free-market” controls.

Anyway I can’t say its been fun because it hasn’t been. Being the only voice, supportive of healthcare reform in this blog and the target of everyone’s disdain isn’t a comfortable spot. I say the only voice because again I am convinced that for conservatives, it isn’t about reform but maintianing the status quo. “conserving” buisness as usual.

I won’t bother you again. You can continue to champion Big buisness and the predatory nature of insurance without me interupting you.

“de-regulate the health-care system to allow further price-hikes and more rationing”

you clearly have no understanding of how free markets operate. If you think de-regulation is going to lead to more price hikes and “rationing” then you have a long way to go.

you talked about fairness, the poor,triple premiums, encouraging comeptition etc… without providing evidence for how exactly a public plan will accomplish any of those things you mentioned.

the rest of your writing is emotional nonesense much like your talk about reality and being “realistic”