On Jul 11, 7:29*am, "Ed Huntress"

I believe that healthcare should be a choice, not something that is
mandatory.

Wait until you don't have a choice, and then see how you feel about
healthcare being "mandatory."

But I do have a choice, and I do have insurance. But with choice, I
get to pick what insurance I buy. Do I want the pick my own doctor or
do I want the go to the clinic and take whoever is available. Do I
want the insurance with a cap of 1 million dollars, or the 10 million
cap. Do I want the $100 deductable, or the $1000 deductable per
year. So I think I will always want to have choice, and never think I
will not have a choice until the laws change.

I had a heart attack last year and the hospitals charged me $220,000. I had
very good insurance. The insurance company paid the hospitals $48,000, and
they apparently were happy. What was I supposed to do, negotiate with them
while they had me stuck full of tubes and they were rushing me into the
operating room? Is this a hospital, or a Mexican trinket shop?

I think it should be against the law for hospitals to charge
different rates depending on whether you have insurance. This guy
with the $400,000 bill is getting ripped because he did not have
insurance.


The idea that healthcare should be a "choice" is unmitigated nonsense. There
is no choice. Hospitals have to care for you whether you can pay them or
not. That's the law in almost every place.

Right and in Washington State, insurance companies have to provide all
kinds of things
I do not believe in. Yep all the stuff that the AMA says is quack
medicine.


You aren't going to say, "oh,
gosh, too bad, my wife has to die." Unless you're suicidal, you aren't going
to refuse necessary care. If you want to make it all a "choice," then you'll
have to provide fast-freeze lockers to take care of the bodies that get
stacked up outside of the main doors to the hospitals.

That is what they do in New Zealand. Except they do not say they are
refusing to care for you. But a two year wait for a operation on a
brain tumor is the same thing.



Your idea is as nutty as theirs, Dan. And, like Gunner, there is no chance
in hell you're going to shrug and say "too bad" if your family member is in
desperate need and you happened to make the wrong choice.

No that is why I have insurance. But if I were rich enough, I could
self insure.

All that's going
to happen is what's happening now: people who can't get insurance (I
couldn't get it at *any* price for a few years before 1980, until the laws
changed) or who can't afford it are going to wind up getting emergency care
on the public's tab. And it's going to be an inefficient mess, because it's
a pasted-together system that squeezes the hospitals and everyone else until
each mess is settled. We have one local hospital that just went under for
this very reason (Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center). For charity care,
they get paid $0.40 on the dollar, and it broke their back.

Jez your insurance company paid less than $0.40 on the dollar. So
maybe it is your insurance company that broke their back.

Now the other
close-by hospital is so jammed that my mother's doctor won't even send her
there. And he's on their staff!

*I also believe the same for retirement. *You should be
able to opt out of Social Security. *Maybe there should be a way you
could prove that you providing for yourself and then pay a smaller
amount to a system to help pay for those less fortunate.

Maybe. But that's a different thing altogether.

As it is we have dead doctors collecting from Medicare. *And Social
Security funds being used by Congress to fund other things. *My kid is
likely to pay more into Social Security than he will ever collect. *A
negative return on his " investment ".

That's greed and corruption, not the structure of the healthcare system. If
you figure out how to keep people from being greedy and corrupt, let us
know. Their greed and corruption doesn't go away when everybody has to pay
their own way or die.

Maybe not, but greed and corruption can be worse when the gov is in
charge and the civil servant has little motive to check that
everything is on the up and up.



I can not imagine Congress coming up with a good plan for universal
healthcare. *Look at their plans for the mortgage industry.

Their plan for the mortgage industry was the LACK of a plan. It was the
libertarian plan -- pretend the problem isn't there, and maybe it will just
go away. But it doesn't go away. It just rears around and bites us in the
ass. That was a case of giving free license for greed and corruption.

I am referring to what Congress is proposing for a fix.


I don't think those three are nutty. *Countries that have universal
healthcare have their problems too.

Of course, but they have better healthcare and live longer.

A friend of my wife's husband
needed an operation in New Zealand and was scheduled to have it done
in two years ( in Austrailia yet ). *Fortunately it was reported in
the papers and some other poor ******* got bumped.

Take your anecdotes and stack them up against the reality of the numbers. If
you want, I'll point you to the epidemiological data sources I used in my
medical editing work. Then you'll realize how silly the anecdotes sound in
comparison.

This was the husband of someone that I personally know. Her daughter
lives near you. Not an anecdote.


--
Ed Huntress