On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

HeyBub wrote:
Phisherman wrote:

Stop the waste. If Medicare/Medicade have worked well, I might be
for the proposed plan.


Not to disagree, but sometimes stopping the waste costs more than
ignoring the inefficiency. You can't build a house without making
sawdust (unless you're using mud bricks).

As an example, the IRS doesn't seize someone's house, garnish their
wages, and file suit in federal court over a delinquent tax bill of
two dollars!

No, wait...

One of the big problems is that the insurance companies are being forced to
cover the uninsured. How does that happen you ask? Well, hospitals are
required by law to give at least a minimal standard of treatment to anyone
who walks into the emergency room, without regard to means. The laws that
require them to do this do not provide any means of compensating them for
the costs incurred. Even nonprofit hospitals have to recover costs somehow
or they run out of money and can't pay their bills. Thus the means they use
to recover costs is to set their rates so that anyone _with_ insurance gets
surcharged to cover the uninsured. This means, for example, that Joe
Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he gets them
for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get four stitches on
the same table from the same doctor and get charged 2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected to
pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or service.


I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.
Hospitals will work with those without money--you can pay whatever you
can per month until paid up.