How many people on here are of the same opinion i am, if there are people who cannot afford health care get?

a job and pay for it the way i do, if you don't make enough to afford the fuel prices then walk, its a good weight loss program, and if the cost of food bothers you don't eat so much it is a good weight loss program, now who can find fault with this Plan?

How many people on here are of the same opinion i am, if there are people who cannot afford health care get?
I agree with your basic thought, however, if only life was black and white. What about those who are on disability, mentally unstable, or Veterans returning from war? These are all circumstances that make your blanket argument seem selfish. For those that are capable, then get out and find a job. But, what do we do with those that aren't?
Reply:Yes. It's called common sense. And if a person can't get a job that provides health insurance, go to their state website and sign up for low-cost or no-cost healthcare. Yes, it's that easy.
Reply:Well, there IS something to be said for letting the market provide solutions, rather than insulate people from the economics of their decisions.





LESS government regulation would decrease the distortions in the market that make health care more expensive. Changing tax policy so that individuals, not employers, make the decisions regarding insurance, and allowing interstate competition so people could "shop" and have more alternatives.





I realize the question may have been tongue-in-cheek, but there's a germ of a good idea buried in there!
Reply:I agree. You are going to get a lot of negative remarks.
Reply:40 million people is a big customer base,some insurance company could come up with a basic policy.


But with government threatening to take over,who's going to waste the effort and expense.
Reply:I had to work two jobs at one time. I didn't need a nanny. Nor did I carry a violin and whine.
Reply:No. This is the US of A, not Costa Rica.





Our government is raping us of our money.
Reply:okay send ur kids to private school since u obviously can afford it and stop using my tax money
Reply:I'd love to see you live on minimum wages for 1 year





your holier than thou attitude would change rather quickly


for you see, one can not afford health insurance or care when raising a family making minimum wages
Reply:I believe in self-reliance, but I also believe in the rule of law and we don't have that operating in the US.





Contrary to what you mistakenly believe, not everyone is insurable. I know this to be fact because I've been uninsurable most of my life and no I don't have HIV, I've never done drugs, I don't have a transplant--and no I could not get a rider to exclude the problem area and I could not get a policy even if I paid more than I made and I'm not alone.





The uninsured are charged many times more what the insured are charged. It's getting very difficult to get that EXCESS CHARGE written off--especially if it's a hospital that wants the money:





"In 1998, the CAGW (Citizens Against Government Waste) wrote a disheartening report on nonprofit hospitals indicating most were not worth the taxes they were exempted from. It was called Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth from Non-Profit Hospitals? In 2006, they revisited the issue and noted that nothing really had changed. One example in the short update (Wright, “Nonprofit Hospitals Still Abusing Tax-Exempt Status,” 26 July 2006) noted that one “nonprofit” hospital had charged a low-income, uninsured woman $20,296 for a procedure that Medicare would pay $3,994 to perform. The report urges government and taxpayers to look at the community benefits provided by nonprofits in light of what they receive (the massive tax breaks) and what they pay their people (benefits included) and the surpluses they run, as well as their billing practices.





In Who Killed Health Care?, Regina Herzlinger gives another frightening example of what too many hospitals are about: profit. She recalls being at a meeting for congressional legislative assistants about the creation of small, specialty hospitals to treat a particular health area, such as heart disease. The hospital was to be “partially owned and managed by doctors.” She notes that hospitals account for the bulk of costs and increases in costs of health care, but the established general hospitals saw the creation of specialty hospitals as an economic threat, so they went to Congress to disallow such hospitals from existing. The hospitals were represented primarily by the CEO of a “chain of 24 non-profit hospitals” who stated that such a specialty hospital would interfere with the billion-dollar non-profit’s ability to provide free and subsidized care to the poor and sick in that region. Supposedly the best-paying patients were being lured away from his chain to the 55-bed specialty hospital. Congress listened and instituted a “moratorium on the expansion of specialty hospitals.”





Herzlinger then looks at the facts. In 2003, while battling the small hospital, the non-profit earned $26 million in profits and had $50 million in liquid assets—after all expenses and charity care were deducted. In 2004, after Congress acted, the hospital had their profits and liquid assets increase 15 percent and saw fit to do things such as donate $200,000 to the local high school football league. However, the hospital’s charity care fell by 40 percent and profits increased. By 2005, the charity care was down to $3 million. By being considered as a non-profit, they had avoided “tens of millions of dollars in taxes.” The way they determined their charity care was also questionable. They listed the prices they’d charge the uninsured as what they were providing for free as well as declaring that the difference between the uninsured prices and what they did receive for Medicare and Medicaid were charity care as well. Herzlinger also notes that part of what the Congress was willing to fight, and the hospitals wanted them to fight, was that price transparency where patients would be told the truth before any procedures about costs so they could comparison shop (4-6).





--Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World pp. 142-144





Furthermore, predatory lenders have entered the fray:


http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnfl...





Here's more on the topic from someone who does actually know medical billing practices:


"“My interest in this subject is a values issue,” he explains. “It just offends me that the people that didn’t have enough money to buy insurance be charged three times what the people who have insurance are charged. From a moral standpoint it seems to me it’s wrong.”





Rooney points to the profits local hospitals are making by way of explaining his indignation. Clarian Hospital, for example, had profits of $132,709,138 in 2004 with cash and investments of $1.45 billion. Dan Evans, Clarian’s president and CEO, received $1,071,000 in total compensation that year. St. Vincent reported profits in 2005 of $86,498,143 with $500 million in cash and investments. The four hospitals in the Community system made a combined profit of $50 million in 2005.





Rooney has made helping people get out from under debt due to lack of health insurance a major focus of his Fairness Foundation. “We’ve done a lot of crusading on this and we’ve been very successful,” he says. “My opinion is that when [hospitals] are confronted with a well-informed patient that says it’s an unreasonable bill [the hospitals’] alternative is to sue them and I believe they don’t want to be in court on this issue when they’re charging three times as much.”





Rooney has found that hospitals have made a common practice of charging 3.5 times what Medicare will pay for services. While Rooney acknowledges that hospitals may need to charge more than Medicare will pay, he contends that authoritative research shows that Medicare plus 25 percent is the reasonable amount for hospitals to charge.





But hospitals are notorious for their lack of transparency when it comes to revealing what their costs actually are. “Dan Evans, the head of Clarian, testified before the Senate Finance Committee two or three weeks ago,” Rooney says. “He said [transparency] could be done but it’s so complicated it’s not worthwhile and we don’t want to do it.” But, Rooney adds, a health care system in Milwaukee, Wheaton Franciscan, has recently signed a contract in which it agrees to disclose what it will charge for 29 common hospital procedures.


The prevalent lack of transparency in hospitals, combined with the fact that people who are sick or injured are often unable to be their own best advocates, places patients in a particularly vulnerable position. Rooney also sees the higher prices being charged to the uninsured as a potential civil rights issue. “I am concerned about the minority people. I don’t want to see them screwed. Nationally, 35 percent of Hispanics are uninsured; 22 percent of African-Americans are uninsured; and 11 percent of non-Hispanic Caucasians are uninsured. So when you’re doubling, tripling, multiplying the price by five times, you’re doing it mainly to minority people,” Rooney says. “I consider that racial discrimination.”





In Maryland, what hospitals charge is now regulated by law. Rooney points out that Maryland’s Johns Hopkins Hospital is considered one of the nation’s best and manages to operate with a cost-to-charge ratio of 81 cents to the dollar. “They make a lot of money and they’re not gouging people,” he says. He would like to see the governor take the lead on the regulatory issue in Indiana."


http://www.nuvo.net/article.php?title=de...





Again, there is more to the article, before and after the quoted material, but I place it there to establish additional evidence for what I've said because some people want to argue about this. Oh, and the man being cited is the founder of the Golden Rule Insurance company as anyone who bothers to check sources will see.





You'll also note what Johns Hopkins charges and frankly, you'd be hard pressed to find a better hospital in the WORLD than that one, so BS about the "costs" of providing quality care should be skipped.





Though I respect what Rooney does, you can be turned down by Golden Rule--I was--repeatedly, making me one of the people who could not be insured in the US (and my employers offered me NO insurance). I also do NOT agree with his views about governmental regulation of prices, because the villain number one is large insurance companies:


Read Linda Peeno, MD's confession to basically letting the expensive die when she was able to deny legit claims in the insurance industry:


http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/DrPe...





So, the government needs to STOP its meddling. The government needs to enforce contract law principles which are ROUTINELY violated by the large insurers (hence their repeated denial of legit claims) and the antitrust laws they violate with impunity.





When there is a rule of law, THEN and ONLY THEN is your idea remotely practical.





IF people were serious about fixing the problems, they'd look at something like this: resolves a lot of problems instead of creating more special interest groups.


http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.htm...


Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com


Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World