I was uninsured until I was about 35 years old and then I only bought a $10,000 deductible policy. I did not get health insurance until I was in my forties. In the late 1960's and 1970's your family could have a baby for less than $1000. Other procedures were also cheap. It made a lot more sense to self-insure and pay out of the pocket. What happened?

The government got into the picture with medicare and medicaid. Those really got rolling in the late 1960's. That in itself wasn't the problem but the administration was the key cause to the distortion. You could go to any doctor you wanted and basically get anything done you wanted. A true government plan places cost controls, and limits choices. This did not happen and costs went through the roof. I am on medicare now because my insurance company makes the government the prime coverage when I turned 65.

When I go to the doctor's office about twice a year for the checkups that I must have to keep my insurance company happy, with its health care monitoring system, the place is crawling with geezers who are there for minor problems. Trust me, I know that this is true. This drain causes a strain on the system.

The government broke it and now the mopes in the government say: "Gee, the system is broken. WE are going to fix it." That is really rich.

Fears of today's world. My fear is that there is a majority of American citizens so stupid and mind-numbed that they actually believe that the federal government can actually "run" something. And by running it, they can REDUCE costs! And introduce efficiencies, run it more efficiently! And it will be run more fairly! With more compassion! With less waste!! And there won't be any corruption!!! (Come on, you guys are killing me . . .oops, bad choice of words)

The fact is that Americans enjoy the best health care options in the world today. No, it isn't free. Neither is the government-run program in Sweden. Or England. Or Canada. Or Russia. Nothing is free, children. Remember? Pretty words spoken by an articulate leader can make you feel better, but to solve a problem like this, you need something more than the Holy Grail of government control and largesse packaged in pretty rhetoric.

If having the freedom to choose means anything to you, please think about this. Like an adult. Like someone who can be hurt by making the wrong choice. If you truly believe that there is no compassion in America's health care facilities, volunteer for a month at a hospital. Try to figure out how America attracts nurses and aides, whose knowledge is exceeded only by their capacity to help and console. Are there bad apples? Sure. But, if you believe that un iversal health care managed and funded by tax dollars is superior to today's system, you simply do not know enough about today's system.

Don't throw away your freedom to a bunch of government bureaucrats who really don't care about you or anyone else. Not without a fight.

My job pays for my health benefits but it does not kick in until I have spent a thousand dollars out of my pocket in deductibles, and then it will only pay 80% if they think I need it. My Doctors visits of $20, a visit does not count toward my deductible, so I could literally spend thousands of dollars going out of my pocket and not going toward my deductible. I have already spent $300 dollars for those visits. And I have already spent $750 dollars toward my deductible and still don't have an answer to my medical problems. Years ago when they said your Insurance covered 80% it covered 80%. Now they have high deductibles and they still don't want to cover your visit as out of pocket fees.... where do they think that money is coming from???

Health care?  Doesn't sound very caring to me.  I have two medical conditions that prohibit me from getting individual health insurance.  It's not fair that insurers can pick and choose who they want to cover, especially if my health conditions are genetic.

They call it "health care"... but do they really "care"?

Something does have to be done about the health care and the way it is
run. There is a great deal of people that are working that can't even
receive any health care at all because they have no insurance. It
does raise some concerns.

Hillary's [rather conservative] healthcare plan seems quite reasonable to me.

Why not check it out, instead of listening to anti-social right-wing Republican propaganda and having a cow about "socialism":

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/hillary_care_and_socialized_me.html

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcarepla n/

http://www.democrats.org/a/national/affordable_heal th_care/

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ezra_klein/2007 /11/giulianis_cancer_myth.html

  Much as I like to see people taken care of in any medical situation, the fact is, our tax dollars are already paying for illegal aliens emergency room treatments and that's okay with me but when it comes to our next possible president with an idea to shell out more to support their total healthcare it concerns me somewhat. C'mon Hillary! 80 something thousand a year? Some limit. Can we find any candidates with common sense any more?

in a perfect world we all would have good jobs that carried health insurance and we all would make enough money to pay for that health insurance but thats not reality. when you are young and healthy you don't ponder on your mortality and because of never having to experience yet the health issues we start to face as we get older we don't realize that this really is a serious issue that we need to take care of and prepare for when we are healthy and young.

My fear is that they'll start charging me for everyone else's. I'm already paying for public education and afterschool programs for children I don't have so I'd like to avoid having this one tossed in my lap as well.

How many Americans are one plant closure or buy out away from having no health insurance? I am not a big fan of social medicine but what we have, is not far from it. Around here it is not that uncommon to spend over four hours waiting in the emergency room to be seen and it does not matter if you have insurance or not.

Causes more bankrupcies and defaulted mortgages than politicians want to admit. . .it's a scam and the middle class is left holding the bag. . .if a 'medical problem' cannot be financially handled by a middle-class family, than the system is rigged and needs to be blown up. . .it's already 'socialized' health-care if you have few choices. . .

very big scare for me and our family. on our one income the cost of full insurance at almost $400.00 was too much for us to handle. we had no choice but to get catastrophic insurance for my husband and I . because of our income our son has a different insurance than us. our daughter has limited insurance as well. it scares the daylights out of my. catastrothpic will only pay after a very high deductable but it was half the cost. I am scared of getting very sick now and know there is no way we could pay the bills. we are not trying to be delinquent. we had to choose between paying all of our other bills or having full insurance. what an awful decision to make. it is very upsetting that we cannot have full insurance which is not much better of a deal since there are deductalbes involved here too before they will even begin to pay medical bills. I worry all of the time of what will happen if we get real sick and have huge medical bills. we can barely make it by now.something has to be done. everyone should have decent insurance.