Replies to post #34225 on Politics and Money

[DesertDrifter]

i believe the role of government is in community service to cover the extremes of medical needs....

they are:

1) the truly impoverised who LEGITIMATELY cannot afford health insurance

2) insurance for catastropic medical needs....IMO....there is no reason a family should have to sell their home or go bankrupt because a family member experienced an extraordinary medical misfortune

i don't think that is unreasonable at all. the rub is how the hell do we pay for them? Since presently we, that have insurance, pay for it all. the safety net as you describe it can be spread more cheaply to everyone rather than just those that can and choose to purchase insurance.

and i think we are agreed that preventive medicine is the more cost-effective approach, no matter who is paying for it. But i don't really have any warm and fuzzy feelings for the massive amounts of overhead we pay to the multitude of health care insurers who add no value.

[shermann7]

Throw in two things, and I like it...

1. Covering a once a year physical. I believe this should be mandatory to qualify for any govt health benefits.

2. A standardized set of forms that all medical entities can use.

How would you handle people with existing conditions that cannot get insurance coverage???

Shermann

[hellcatjr]

I disagree, it is a slippery slope. Whenever you begin to subsidize any market, the government begins to over-regulate which then prices out the market in regards to services.

Incidentally, your comments..

1) the truly impoverised who LEGITIMATELY cannot afford health insurance

This is simply a symptom of a larger problem imo. Economic inequity has created this vacuum of 'truly impoverised'.

2) insurance for catastropic medical needs....IMO....there is no reason a family should have to sell their home or go bankrupt because a family member experienced an extraordinary medical misfortune

But, the tax-payer should not be forced to cover the medical needs of another. I understand that some may find this controversial, but subsidizing ones losses onto another is not a solution. Given enough time, this'll be gamed, hi-jacked and used to further impoverish the masses.

Medicine in general has become a cash-cow. Whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath? Most of the 'diseases' are by-products of a modernized world and we simply label them as diseases. More medicine, more insurance, more premiums, more profits.

It has become pretty sickening. More so then corporate crime and international affairs. To me, chemotherapy is euthanasia, plain and simple. In some cases, medical treatment will cost individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars which coincidentally finds itself falling to the heirs of next in line succession of families.

More debt slavery only this time in the form of medical bills.