Another factor driving up health care is the fact that the government requires hospitals to provide care to medicare/medicaid patients, along with the indigent, at below cost. That means that those who have insurance end up carrying the difference. Any plan that expands this, while eliminating the people who are currently carrying the cost, is doomed for fail.

It seems to me that if you want to increase coverage, you need to reduce the cost; start means testing medicare and paying the free market value for services rendered (to the smaller “client” base), and the costs will start to come down.

My first thought when anyone starts to say “Well, the Government should…” is “The government shouldn’t!”

I’ve had this same train of thought for a long time. DMV, Post Office, City Hall, Board of Education, car inspection… LINES and useless government employee’s that are counting down the days until they retire at 50 or 20 years service.

Now we want to give over control of our very bodies and lives to these people!

No.

just like gun ownership is a right, but the government doesn’t (and shouldn’t) provide guns to those that can’t afford them.
There is a song with the lyric “Tax the rich and feed the poor until there are no rich no more,”, that I think Obama listened to way too much when he was a kid. But there’s a problem he missed, when there are no more rich left to tax, how you gonna feed the poor??

I was too busy at work Tuesday to call anyone, I did not eat lunch. Today I called as many of the blue dogs that I could. One dismissed me when I said I was from MA. I learned then not to tel them where I was from and called the rest on the list, none asked my name. I called my senator’s office twice and rep three times, I called Ted Kennedy’s office to say I was against it, they took my name, etc. I called John Kerry’s office, they only wanted my zip code. I told them I was not happy that he DOES NOT respond to me at all and the man replied that he gets a lot of calls. I told him that Ted K always responds, the man told me that he’s sure not many people call Ted’s office now.

I do not agree with Ted Kennedy at all, but I have to say at least he does respond. I got five emails between Monday & Tuesday about why he thinks Cap & Tax and Govt Health Care should be passed.

I called Ed Markey who is about as liberal as Nancy Pelosi, stated my problems with bill and one of his three offices (?? on why he has three) could answer my problems with it.

I called Eric Cantor’s office and asked what else I could do, I was transferred to marketing person, she told me the best thing we can do is to keep calling and tell our friends and relatives to call too. Please do not stop calling. We know what is in this bill, there are those people that voted for Obama that think everything is free.

Please keep calling as much as you can. We don’t need the govt to tell us when we can go to dr or when it is time to euthanize our family, or ourselves.

[Now shoo. -ML]

i have hep c
tier 4 interferon co pay went from 30$ to 325$
I hate republicans

Veterans Administration health care and Medicare, two of the most popular government programs of all time.

There are those with health insurance and the indigent who can’t pay for their health care. Another group not often mentioned are those who have no insurance but pay for their own health care. These people are victims of the most egregious costs of all.

My wife had an angiogram a couple of years ago. The usual hospital cost submitted to an insurance company for this procedure is around $4,000-$5,000. Since we were paying our own way, the hospital bill alone was well in excess of $17,000. So much for encouraging people to pay their own way.

Actually, litigation is a extremely small part of medical costs and has pretty much remained constant over the years. There are many studies that have shown this. (http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=36768 for a study on tort reform).

Insurance premiums may have gone up, but this is due to the structure and profits of the insurance industry, not trial lawyers.

If the Dems pass the socialist government run health care and then gets to decide who lives and dies, it’s just more motivation to make sure we elect Republicans in 2010. Then we get to decide who goes first and guess who’s first on the list? I’d name names, but I’m sure I’m already on that right-wing extremist hit list, I’m being audited for the first time ever and I don’t need any more headaches.