End our current health care system

It does need an overhaul, a big one. However, to simply pounce on it in a simple reactive way would be a disaster of near biblical praportions. A number of questions that must FIRST be answered are:
1.) How will it be paid for and who gets the bill?
2.) How do we ensure the quality and availability remains?
3.) How do we do it with out turning such a system in to to a beurocracy like everything else the federal government runs?
And those only scratch the general surface of questions, it doesn't even touch the thousands of specifics in each of those 4 questions. The big hurtle is that our federal government is already neck deep in far more than it is suposed to be and as a result, it doesn't do any one thing particularly effective, inexpensive, efficiantly or rapidly, except maybe to get in the way of our lives and liberty.
You might be suprised to know I am not nessesarily against some sort of government alternative to health coverage, that is, a government sponsored insurance plan for those who wish to opt in. But I want:
a.) for such a plan to NOT be manditory,
b.) to ONLY deal with paying the bills and oversight of the billing proccess to those who choose it, NOT the healthcare itself
c.) To strip the government back to it's original intent and eliminate a lot of the nonsense to pay for it and make it more efficiant before it runs ANYTHING else
d.) To have a clear and effective way to pay for it
e.) To impliment such a system in a constitutionaly sound manner.

We need to be very careful when looking at reforming the health care system in this country. There are some advantages with the current system that I do not believe have been properly expressed to the public.

First of all, we do have the best care in the world available here in the U.S.A.. We may not be able to afford it but it is available here. As an example, my wife had to have brain surgery a year ago due to the presence of an AVM. She had her surgery at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Luckily, we had decent insurance and were able to afford the procedure. While down there, we met several other people that were at the hospital from other countries with socialized medicine. They were at Mass General to receive treatment because the surgeries they needed were not available in their country or the wait was too long.

Second, the tax burden for a socialized health care program will be extremely burdensome on the tax payer. The amount of tax increase will require for Americans to dramatically alter their lifestyles. The estimates on this cost vary widely, but I think it would be safe to say that the average taxpayer would lose an additional 10% of their income to fund such a program.

I do believe that we can make improvements to the way we pay for health care in this country, but we need to be very careful in the way that we decide to do this.

I heard that Australia & the UK pays for the health care of the citizens. Also I heard from a friend of mine that Australia when you pay for your auto tag you pay for your auto insurance at the same time. It sounds to me like these countries care about the citizens.

I could not agree with you more. A few years ago there was a coalition formed between business and labor to take a look at the health care system. It was the first time ever that big business (Walmart etc) and labor sat down on the same side of the table. The coalition was headed by Andy Stern who was a former Philadelphia labor leader. They quickly came to the conclusion that the US health care system was broken to the point that it could not be fixed and needed to be scapped and rebuilt. I haven't heard anything about this lately but I would certainly like to see President Obama meet with some of the members of that coalition.

You hit the nail on the head when you brought up the fact that health care is a major reason we are losing jobs. It always amazes me that people can't see this and continue to harp on wages being lower elsewhere. In fact they made a big issue out of auto workers making the equivalent of 60K per year and totally glossed over the fact that at least 1/3 of that 60K package was in health care benefits. Automakers are one of the few industries that gave adequate health care and it probably helped to get them in the mess they are in.

One of my pet peeves is the situation with the hospitals in the big cities like Philadelphia where I have lived. There are more colleges and universities here than anywhere else in the country. Thousands of those graduates stay for at least awhile and work in the city. They are healthy, young people away from their family doctors and school infirmaries but they almost all work jobs with health benefits. What happens when they need an antibiotic, sprain a wrist, need a few stitches? They head for the nearest hospital ER which in Philly means a state of the art teaching hospital that automatically charges their health care plan two grand the minute they walk in the door. And who pays for those visits? Me and you and everybody paying ridiculously high health care premiums. There's got to be a better way.

I do not want government run health care period. The government has already has a proven track record of screwing things up. You want them to screw up your health care as well? Case in point, Medicare and Medicaid. The government would take all of our options away. In addition, none of our medical records would be safe anymore. HIPPA would essentially go out the window.

Sure our current system has flaws. I am not downplaying them. Every health care system you look at has flaws, UK, Canada, and Europe. Health care carries a high cost. We do have the best system in the world because it is not government controlled. The government cannot tell us what treatment is best for the individual. Can you imagine some government worker who has no medical knowledge whatsoever making your critical medical decisions? Because that is exactly what will happen.

What is the true cost if the government takes over? Think about it. Higher taxes because they need to fund it. They would hold the power of life and death in their hands. They can refuse critical treatment because it costs too much. The elderly would essentially get thrown aside because they are too costly to treat. Every one would be forced into a cookie cutter diagnosis where these symptoms are this disease regardless if the person has the disease or not.

There are options that people may not be aware of to offset the higher costs. Hospitals are generally willing to work with you to help you pay. Fundraisers are quite common. Prescription drug companies currently offer help in obtaining medications. We do have options. The government will essentially take all of those options away.

First of all, NOTHING is free. Even 0bama's "free national healthcare plan" is NOT free. If or when this passes, the lower and middle class will see a tax hike of nearly 50 to 70% of their income to pay for this "Free" healthcare system. And it'll fail. Americans are too effin lazy and too effin diseased for anything to take. We've got fat people running up billions and billions of dollars of insurane money because they can't put down the Twinkie. We've got "frequent fliers" as my husband says (He's a nurse) who come to the ED for the sniffles, a hang nail or they don't feel "right" and wind up costing the tax payers millions of dollars every year on useless tests and bogus illnesses and surgeries.

Doctors are terrified to practice medicine anymore for fear of getting sued. My husband works right now as a CRNA (Certified registered nurse anesthetist) and works in the OR with docs. He's hearing it all the time about how people are getting sued left and right. My husband is in 2 lawsuits right now as a person being sued because he was in the room when an "accident" happened. It's outrageous, and yet NO ONE wants to do anything about it.

No one wants to step forward and throw the welfare wh0res off welfare and public aid for their 9 kids by 7 different fathers. No one wants to throw the hypocondriac on public aid out in the street when she comes in for the 8th time in a week complaining of a headache. No one wants to start fining fat people for coming in and using up billions of dollars in money when they need a bypass or a new heart by the time they are 40 because they won't put down the Twinkies and fried chicken.

You've got to fix the TRUE cause of the system before you can go fixing what's on the surface. The underlying cause of the health system now is abuse. Plain and simple. No one wants to go after that. They all want to stick it to people like me who have been in the hospital oh, twice, and one of those times was when I gave birth to our daughter. They don't want to go after the hypocondriac who has been inpatient 10 times in a month. They want to instead pass the buck along to people like me who don't deserve it.

I read over some of the other responses and I really like what I am reading. I hear a lot of people bringing a lot of excellent points to the table. Now the idea would be to get these ideas and points to be heard. I think the average american can take their knowledge and experiences and draw up a plan of what they think should happen. If they can sit down with a few other intelligent americans that may not agree, but have the same goal in mind, I think we can give our elected officials a framework that they can work with. The best part of it is PEOPLE WILL BE GETTING INVOLVED in making the changes instead of just complaining about things being broken.
There are things about the current healthcare that are okay, and there are many things that could stand to be revamped. I have been educating myself about the current healthcare system for my own personal reasons, but thanks to the input here I think it is high time that I did my part and got involved.