Danes feel Obama is greater than Jesus

[kandrathe]

Unfortunately, what seems to be coming out of the witch's brew is the worse of all possible worlds. The insurance companies not only are not being eased out of the loop, their position in the loop is being augmented. There isn't a real health care reform in the works, just a mandated health insurance scheme which, between government incompetence and private sector greed, will probably decrease the quantity and quality of health care for all while greatly increasing the cost.

Exactly. However, I believe the way to remove the problems of the private sector mess are to disentangle it from government. No mandates, and no subsidies. Let insurance companies compete for business equally. The way to gut insurance companies is to make health care very affordable, and this would be a blessing for the entire world. So far in my lifetime I've never seen where when the government subsidizes or controls an industry that the prices go down. The forecasts I've seen indicate that there will still be 35 to 40 million people uninsured, the supply and quality of medical care will drop, everyone from the poor to union workers to the elderly will pay more, and overall less people will receive health care. With that in mind, then yes, a total government take over of medicine would be preferable to this worst of all conditions where the government forces people to buy over priced insurance to pay for over priced medical care. Big medicine and big insurance special interests win, with enough pork thrown in to reward the crafters of the legislation and the sweeten the deal for the hold outs.

For Van, "Changes in laws about health insurance can make a huge difference in accessibility of health care. " Well, yes, and in this case I would hazard to claim it will be toward the negative. There is that incentive that if you are too poor to afford insurance you will be fined at 2.5% of your gross income. But a $1250 fine would be less costly than the $10000 you'd have to pay for health insurance through the open market. For many that would be $1250 that would go toward rent, food, or other sustenance. On the other hand, insurance companies will need to pass along the costs of the mandate that they must not deny anyone for pre-existing conditions, so the premiums will rise across the board by 20 to 50%.

Contrary to your perceptions, I'm not a hard hearted bastard. I do want people to be healthy, and get medical care. Which is a different goal than universal 100% health insurance coverage. At a minimum, I would recommend a high deductible catastrophic plan just in case something bad happened. But, if health care were more affordable people would use it as needed without the need to file claims to insurance companies. For example, for my recent wisdom tooth extractions, the costs for the penicillin, Vicodin, and medicinal mouth rinse combined were less than $20 at the pharmacy, so it's not even worth worrying about filing the claim to get the insurance company to pay for it. If the government were paying for it, who knows what the prices would have been. What I don't want is for insurance companies to get rich by government mandate, or the people to be taxed so heavily to pay for huge profits of the big business of medicine. If every dollar taxed for providing medical care actually was spent on medical care I would be less concerned (although, I still think we should have transactions directly with our service providers rather than 3rd parties).

One thing no one has discussed has been to concept of making it easier for patients to afford needed health care without bankrupting themselves. Here is a novel concept, make medical school affordable and produce more doctors and nurses. Another one, how about we make building hospitals and clinics some of those shovel ready projects, rather than siphoning off billions to bail out banks, and other big money special interests.

Focus on increasing the supply of health care, and you will lower the price.