One hospital will begin to advertise inexpensiveness for the care. The prices will be lowered to the point that people could pay without insurance and business in that hospital will boom. Other hospitals will begin to follow suit because they cannot compete with low prices.

The real solution to solving healthcare is to get people asking how much a doctor's visit is going to cost. There is no way to mandate people to go to the lowest priced place so the solution to getting this into the minds of people is by advertising low prices in a hospital, just like every other business on this planet.

Here is my decision process when it comes to a doctor visit.

Is it totally impossible for me to stop the bleeding or fix a broken bone? If yes, then I will consider visiting the doctor.

Is the doctor visit one that is wise to have to prevent a future requirement for surgery, but otherwise elective? If yes, then I decide to take the chance because if I have a stroke, heart attack, or go blind, then it will cost me $6000 more than the $7200 a year I pay for insurance with a $5000 deductable and an additional 20% copay for the next $5000, so the insurance company will pay for 90% of the hundred thousand they negotiate for the retail $250,000 worth of care.

If my doctor will absolutely not renew my prescriptions unless I see him, then I will pay the $250-300 which is the negotiated 50% that my insurance company arranges as part of the $680 monthly premium I pay, but I tell him that I'm not going to agree to the expensive diagnostics like colonoscopy until I'm on government healthcare, and if something comes up before then, I will pay the $6000 deductable each year and depend on the insurance company paying the $250,000 for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

The way I figure it, the insurance company has run the odds and they have concluded that by encouraging me not to do more than take the relatively inexpensive drugs that a 100 million people should be taking based on the odds, the odds of my having a heart attack, stroke, or cancer is less than 50 to 1 each year, so the odds of my having a problem before government healthcare kicks in are less than about 10%.

Of course, I am not the typical individual who is buying individual health insurance; I don't know that I'm sick, and I have a lot of assets, though not as much as I would allow me to afford $12,000 a year for the kind of healthcare that government employees and people on government aid get for less than half that. So that means my odds are even better of not getting hit with something really bad, like most of the people who are driven to buy individual healthcare.

If I had no assets, I wouldn't bother getting health insurance because I would know that if I had a heart attack, stroke, or cancer, I would end up on government healthcare and wouldn't have to pay much if anything for it.

In other words, I'm operating within the parameters of the system that McCain is promoting. People are encouraged to buy health insurance, but not required to. But when someone with a preexisting condition wants insurance, McCain would have them get their insurance from a government run insurance plan which is subsidized by tax dollars.

This is a great system for delivering poor quality care to the poor, ok care to the middle class who pay the majority of the burden, and pretty good care for the well off without it costing them a lot, and then really really great care provided by the government for government officials like McCain.

That will not work. There are too many families that couldn't afford to pay to even have a broken leg fixed out of pocket.

Even if say the total bill was $400 for the emergency room, xrays and the cast setting. Folks are having a hard time paying their utilities and buying food let alone pay for health care.

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Real Christians Don't Support Preemptive War



Life is not about counting the number of breaths you take , life is about the moments that take your breath away.

People are paying $400 deductables on emergency room, xrays and cast settings as it is. Plus its much much cheaper than paying for all the insurance costs too. Even if at the beginning it leaves out the lower middle class and the poor, itll give relief to the rest of the middle class and save the need for government-run healthcare.

They might be paying $400, but that is after the hospital's aid worker has helped them do the paper work to get the $3000 bill paid by the government, charity, a write down on the doctor bill, a contribution in kind by a supplier, bringing the bill down to $400.

Of course, part of the reason the hospital bill is so high is they need to pay to have aid workers who spend all their time finding ways for their patients with no assets and little income to get charity aid to pay the bills.

You're assuming that the whole problem with healthcare is that doctor's simply charge too much.

You're not explaining how you'd eliminate malpractice awards, malpractice insurance costs, and malpractice legal expenses.

You're not explaining how you'd eliminate ALL the government influence that's preventing Medicine from being a free, competitive market. (i.e Medicare, Medicaid, assorted Laws, Regs, Codes, Ordinances, etc. that impact Insurance costs, medical costs or both)

Once you eliminate those kinds of factors, then you might be able to hope for a competitive, demand-driven market amongst the healthcare providers. How many Hospitals can your neighborhood support? If it can't support more than one, then there's no competition in your are, and prices will remain high. I'm sure EVERY neighborhood has enough Doctors, though, so you might actually see competition there. Or else mutual price-fixing. Depends on whether Doctors are in it for the money or the desire to provide quality, affordable service. Heh heh. I almost said it with a straight face...

Healthcare prices can't be manipulated by supply and demand the way a grocery store, a lawn service, or a prostitute can. When the Government is one of your biggest customers (medicare/medicaid) AND one of your biggest policymakers, it's not the same as dealing with a free market.

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Global Warming is my favorite color.

How many people covered by VA, Medicare, or Medicaid bebefits sue their doctors for malpractice?

How many people sue because requested care was denied by the insurance company, which results in a small tumor becoming a massive one, which causes the loss of employment, which results in loss of insurance, which means going on welfare and Medicare, because the cost of paying for treatment out pocket forces declaring bankruptcy?

If the insurance program can't get rid of a customer because they become too expensive to care for, then the insurance program has no reason to deny cheap treatment when it will end up paying for the expensive treatment later.

And if the patient gets the best care, and the patient knows that the doctor did everything possible, instead of not doing things because the insurance company told him not to, then the patient or family has less incentive to sue anyone.

If the patient thinks the insurance company screwed him over, who is he going to sue when the insurance company is protected against lawsuits? Simple, sue the doctor, the agent of the insurance company, who is insured by the insurance company, and who pays for the malpractice insurance by billing at higher rates to the insurance company. So, the patient isn't suing the doctor, he's suing the insurance company that he fronts for.

unless the bone is protruding from my body cavity, i fix it myself. it aint a fun feeling walking on a broken foot twice now, but hey, fuck them bastards.