RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I think it is important. it is pretty pathetic that a country like the USA has one of the worst health care systems. I have no solutions. but everyone should have decent insurance that is affordable. including prescriptions. thank goodness you can now get some medicines for four dollars very helpful for many of us who can not afford outrageous prices. even if you have insurance a lot of those plans are expensive and pay little. and oh that fine print on those plans that give an out to pay for procedures. how can we treat each other this way. Again I say we ALL should have decent insurance, not just a lucky few.

The caption "creating a healthcare system that works" muddies up so many concepts and points of intelligent discussion as to make this a string of shrill arguments which do not address each other directly. The word "create" implies that the government will necessarily be the singular driving, designing, enforcing, rationing force in the project which I and most of my conservative counterparts see as a fundamental mistake. Do you want the government to take over the funding mechanism? How about the delivery mechanism? How about the R&D mechanism? Name a single project of this scale that the US government has undertaken with even the slightest degree of success which would be evidenced by any (ANY!!) level of satisfaction on the part of the user/patient/payer faction, either from the standpoint of cost control, product delivery or absence of corruption. Oh. They're the only ones who can? That's what the Russians thought. The German people in the 1930's. They have shown you one thing over and over . . . they cannot.

IJR, we already have worse, since there is a gaping hole between those who can get government assistance to pay for health care, and those who can afford their own. If not for my developmental disability, I would have fallen through that hole a long time ago.

Where I disagree with the present presidential contenders is that, for the most part, their proposed plans envision keeping the insurance companies as part of the healthcare system. I say remove them. They've had their shot at it, and they've blown it. They are for-profit businesses, and businesses make money by either raising prices (they've done that, with both premiums and co-pays) or reducing costs (ditto, by denying claims, reducing coverages, etc.) or both, and they've done both. Some businesses even make money by producing a better product at a cheaper price than the competition, radical as that might seem (LOL), but that's not where the insurance companies are headed. I'd rather my doctor made the call on whether I need an expensive medical procedure than some faceless insurance company employee who has been provided incentives to deny claims. Not that government-run programs have been models of efficiency, but I trust them to act in my best interests more than I trust insurance companies. And profits for insurance companies would no longer have to be factored in. I'm no expert, but it doesn't take much study to see that the present insurance-based system has run our healthcare system into the ground.

The Democrats will be presenting a bill to Congress this fall that ensures universal health care for children. Guess what? Bush has pledged to veto it. Sorry, I'm not usually a big partisan, because I'm not a huge fan of the Democrats, but the GOP simply doesn't have a clue on this issue.

Let's do Canada's system, it works really good... And here is how it is payed for... $100,000 per year income = $30,000 in income taxes!!! Anything over $115,000 = 45% tax Then there is a 15% sales tax!!! 15 cents on every dollar you spend!!! $500 licensing fee on every car!!! Property tax on a 1200 sq ft home = $3,000 There is a huge goods and services tax on homes and cars!!! A Chrysler minivan is $40,000!!! On a car you pay the GST and a provincial sales tax!!! I have heard stories of people miscarrying in waiting rooms and of a man who got a piece of copper in his finger and waited 15 hours to have it removed. All the Doctors and nurses are fleeing to the U.S. because the wages have been capped. If the system is so great why are Canadians fleeing down here for health care? As for the cheaper drugs in Canada... The U.S. does all of the research and development and then Canada puts a cap on the prices and reaps all the profits. They rip Americans off with generic drugs and Americans wonder how they get drugs so cheap? Socialized medicine will never work!!! The main problem with our skyrocketing costs are too many people(illegals, deadbeats,etc.) receiving benefits and not enough paying for them it is very simple. It is just like car insurance. Everytime some moron wrecks and has no insurance we the consumers have to eat his end.

Hey, I'd take socialized medicine over my current state of being assed out because I can't afford health care and all the illegals are getting the low-income stuff that I would otherwise get.

Middle class families are one serious health problem away from serious financial collapse. . .the game is over, the jig is up, it's time to examine the universal health care systems of other first-world nations and make some real harsh evaluations because what we have does not work. . .

I know that I probably sound like a geezer broken record, but our society has wrecked the health system, and it is time for the government to take it over, sad to say.

I know such action will lessen the quality of life for us all and provide poorer health care. It will spread it out, however.

The increasing poverty of the middle class coupled with the out of control Medicare system has wrecked our health care. The senseless idea that people, my age, can go to any doctor of choice and get any procedure is flat ridiculous. This has driven costs through the roof, and business and worker can't afford the health care let alone any kind of insurance.

Without some ultimately terrible government program, millions will suffer.

. . . as opposed to the people that want to create a crappy health system?

Everyone wants to make their world a better place. We've all just got different ideas on how to go about doing it, which makes things difficult.

I also agree with YaVon, but it shouldn't be the way it is currently, and with a little more effort, it could be changed.

Even though this is a crucial issue, the plan for healthcare is going so slowly that most people living today will be gone before it is perfected and offered to the public.