A Better Solution For Healthcare Reform?

Prevention is very important, but is it really in the interest of the medical and insurance and pharmacy businesses? We get sicker, we use more of their products, they make more money. For me, the primary reason for the government to get involved in health care is to ensure that people (citizens and tax paying residents) have access to some basic level of care if they can't afford to pay for it. I'm not talking elective stuff, but some minimum that includes preventive care, life saving care, etc.

I read that if we do get Obama's health care it will take billions of dollars away from medicare & medicade, if thats true we will end up suffering in the long run...I am just not sure if i like this idea or not..I have also heard that it will be sometimes months before we will be able to see a doctor......I really wish they would just leave us alone & work on another thing besides our health care agenda...

It is a huge expense to become a Doctor and to set up an office. On top of that they have to pay for malpractice insurance. They do do more test than required to keep from being sued. there are Doctors leaving their practice because of the health bill. We already have a shortage of primary care Doctors. We have no real idea of what is in that bill. We need better education about health in our schools.

The government should set up a program to make it cheaper for students training to be doctors. More people would go to medical school if the cost wasn't so steep. More doctors would mean lower costs to see a doctor. There are plenty of other unique ways to lower the cost of healthcare.

Let me ask you, do you think it's wise to let insurance companies take over the health care. I live in Canada and we have government run healthcare. It's really not as bad as Americans make it out to be. It's actually a pretty good solution. I was watching one of your news programs on how your insurance companies handle the care of people and it's pretty bad. I don't know that much about healthcare issues in the US. I'm seriously bothered by the fact that your poor people don't have the same rights to good healthcare that middle income people have.

I have to say I find the American health care system amazingly scary!! Imagine worrying that a fall or a cold could cost you hundreds!! I know we pay through our wages and taxes here for the NHS, but seriously it is a huge weight off your mind that if you are ill people look after you, no questions asked. Surely you get better quicker knowing you can afford it and it is not going to cost you your house or worse!

Prevention would be awesome. My family and I have not had health insurance for about 6 years now. We cannot afford it and it is not offered through my husband's employer either. I hope something is done soon so we can afford to have it. right now everything is out of pocket and the bigger needs do not get taken care of because it is too expensive.

I think your point makes a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, Obama himself said that Medicare recipients were being overcharged by 14 percent on xrays. If he knows that the fact is that people are being overcharged, how does he think that forcing people to get insurance is going to fix this. I do understand that there are a lot of uninsured people out there who wait until they are bad off enough to go to the emergency room before they go to the hospital, and that is why he wants everyone to have health insurance. But what about the people who will be paying for insurance that they never use. Will it be possible to set up a premium refund plan? If you don't use the insurance, can you get part of your money back. I pay cash when I go to the doctor, and have done the math...I am better off paying cash to go to the doctor than I am by getting health insurance. That even includes the medical bills that I had when I broke my arm, and had to have surgery. That just goes to show how expensive insurance is. Just like my auto and homeowner's insurance, this will be another waste of money for me. Taking out insurance is like making a bet against yourself!

Prevention isn't always the cheapest method though. It sounds great but it really is a numbers game. How many people do you have to scan before finding the one that has the problem? Sure, it is cheaper for the individual to catch it earlier but will it really be cheaper for the hospital overall? Suppose you have to scan a thousand people to find that one. Suppose it costs a $100 for each scan. 1000 * 100 = $100,000. Then it takes $5000 to treat that one person. Total $105,000. If instead a person appeared in the later stages of this imaginary disease and it costs $50,000 to treat the disease, which is cheaper overall? The $105,000 the hospital spent to screen to find the 1 in 1000 or the $50,100 the hospital spent to treat the single person in the later stage of the disease? This whole scenario is entirely imaginary in nature and numbers in no way reflect actual costs or treatment costs. The whole point was to get you to think that while prevention does have its advantages, it will not necessarily lower the overall costs of health care as a whole.