I agree alphabet. Sorry to hear about your wife, happy to hear she was able to recover from it, and also before you would have reached disastrous circumstances.

So, you didn’t have family insurance through your job? And considering she didn’t have any lapse in insurance during that time, there was no way to switch over to your company’s plan?

I’m sorry about your wife’s situation, and I’m sure it must have been very difficult, and I’m glad she’s recovered now.

I agree that there needs to be a health care reform, however I strongly disagree with the Universal type that Hitlary is broadcasting. Anything the Government puts forth seems to actually COST MORE, and is a TOTAL MESS. I cannot afford to have my wages garnished. There has to be a better way……………..We need a very strong "think tank". A "think tank" that would go way beyond such government intervention.

I totally agree with you.

Our healthcare system is a DISGRACE!

So many people are not getting the care they need yet we give away billions of dollars of free care to other countries.

I can’t even write about it without getting apoplectic. It’s absolutely the 2nd worst situation in America second only to homelessness in this country.

And if you think people aren’t dying because they don’t have health insurance THINK AGAIN. People are denied care every single day in this country because they can’t pay for it.

Weren’t you on here several months ago asking a question about whether a current "love" interest was too young for you?

And I can’t answer your post because you didn’t ask a question. But just for the heck of it – You are absolutely correct that something simply must be done about the Health Care Crisis in this country.

Agreed.

Yes it does!

ALL INSURANCE COMPANIES SHOULD BE ABOLISHED…IT IS A CORRUPT ORGANIZATION!

Anyone would be able to see it if it were mafia offering protection money and then promising to break your legs if you do not pay them back. Why can’t the American Public see that that is EXACTLY what all insurance companies are doing? They capitalize on something they know you will need because everyone gets sick, everyone dies and everyone is eventually in a car accident. They are capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of people and on people’s fears.

When people are unfortunate enough to have one of these inevitable events take place in their lives, they don’t need to be punished more than once.

ABOLISH AND MAKE THE OPERATION OF ALL INSURANCE COMPANIES ILLEGAL. These companies are betting and profiting on your demise. It is sinister what they are doing. It is capitalism at its very worst.

The medical profession hates it, the patients hate it and yet it is allowed to continue. Why??? It is not beneficial to anyone and very detrimental to everyone.

Any medical reform that includes the simple modification of insurance companies is not enough for me. Insurance companies must be abolished and made to be illegal business practice. The operators of such businesses should go out and get real jobs and quit preying on the American Public.

Yes, it does need change. I have been thinking on that scenario in the current buzz on a national health care system, it is not uncommon to have expenses on health care that are not covered by insurance companies.

Have worked on several homes of senior citizens that had to sell their homes with reverse mortgages to pay for health costs and needed changes in their home for handicap access. They had insurance, but still basically lost their home.

Hope it works out for us all, I certainly don’t have a good plan. Having read all of the candidates proposals, haven’t come across a plan that seems feasible, either.

It has become very difficult to grow old and frail.

I don’t think anyone is arguing with the fact that Health Care reform is NOT needed. I think the big argument is how to go about making it affordable without being socialist in nature. Who pays, and how much, mandatory or optional, government run or privately run. These are all important to our way of life and freedoms to choose. I believe the first thing we should do is eliminate government interference and red tape. I think we also should hold insurance companies responsible and not let them have a free pass as far as what procedures, diseases, etc are covered. It should be blanket health care and that if a doctor orders the procedure, it is covered. When we made car insurance mandatory, we didn’t reduce the cost at all, what we have is people driving without insurance and when they get caught they pay a 300.00 fine which is cheaper than the car insurance.

On a personal note: I am glad your wife is alright and truly sorry you both had to go through that. I also hope we can resolve this issue so that others do not have to endure it either.

Yes it is and it’s NOT UHC that’s needed if that’s where your mind is going. Here’s the straight story on the health care "industry" in the US:
When 75% of the people who declare bankruptcy over medical bills ARE INSURED, then insurance is CLEARLY not the answer.
"Aldrich’s situation is "asinine" but increasingly common, said Dr. Deborah Thorne of Ohio University. Thorne, co-author of a widely quoted 2005 study that found medical bills contributed to nearly half of the 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, said that ratio has likely worsened since the data was gathered.
…
Like Aldrich, Thorne said, three-quarters of the individuals in the study who declared bankruptcy because of health problems were insured. "
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20201807/

Linda Peeno, MD testified that SHE had often denied treatment JUST to save the insurance company money http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/DrPeenotestimony.html

Furthermore:
"the vast majority of health insurance policies are through for-profit stock companies. They are in the process of “shedding lives” as some term it when “undesirable” customers are lost through various means, including raising premiums and co-pays and decreasing benefits (Britt, “Health insurers getting bigger cut of medical dollars,” 15 October 2004, investors.com). That same Investors Business Daily article from 2004 noted the example of Anthem, another insurance company. They said the top five executives (not just the CEO) received an average of an 817 percent increase in compensation between 2000 and 2003. The CEO, for example, had his compensation go from $2.5 million to $25 million during that time period. About $21 million of that was in stock payouts, the article noted.

A 2006 article, “U.S. Health Insurance: More Market Domination, More CEO Compensation”
(hcrenewal.blogspot.com) notes that in 56 percent of 294 metropolitan areas one insurer “controls more than half the business in health maintenance organization and preferred provider networks underwriting." In addition to having the most enrollees, they also are the biggest purchasers of health care and set the price and coverage terms. “’The results is double-digit premium increases from 2001 and 2004—peaking with a 13.9 percent jump in 2003—soaring well above inflation and wages increases.’" Where is all that money going? The article quotes a Wall Street Journal article looking at the compensation of the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. His salary and bonus is $8 million annually. He has benefits such as the use of a private jet. He has stock-option fortunes worth $1.6 billion."
–Save America, Save the World by Cassandra Nathan pp. 127-128

"Insurance Companies Robbing Patients
Robbing patients to pay CEOs leads to unprecedented medical insurance corporation greed.
Thursday, January 3, 2008 8:52 AM
By: Michael Arnold Glueck & Robert J. Cihak, The Medicine Men"
http://www.newsmax.com/medicine_men/medical_insurance/2008/01/03/61543.html

Compare that with the pockets of free market we have:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/0217er17.html
A doctor owned and run hospital that sees everyone gets care, no matter what happens to the bottom line.

http://www.simplecare.com/ a doctor-driven group where reasonable rates are charged.

Note you can go to a walk-in clinic at Wal-Mart or CVS or the like in many cities and get many of the most typical reasons for seeing a doc addressed for under $100.

The price of LASIK has DROPPED dramatically over a decade. Plastic surgery is CHEAP. Compare a major procedure like a tummy tuck with the bill an uninsured patient will get for a medically necessary appendectomy WITHOUT complications.

Compare that with REAL government health care. Here’s the truth about Medicaid:
Oregon’s at least honest about the FACT that ALL government health care IS RATIONED care:
"But the real-life story of 18-year-old Brandy Stroeder may come to embody a harsher truth: namely, that even as we perfect more and more advanced medical procedures, not everyone is going to have access to them. And, as Americans struggle to come up with an equitable health care system, that even the best-intentioned system can seem heartless when forced to balance the good of thousands against an individual’s suffering.

The story began last fall when doctors told Brandy, who lives with her single mother in a weather-beaten farmhouse about an hour south of Portland, Ore., that she was likely to die within a year unless she got a simultaneous lung-liver transplant, an operation that has been performed fewer than a dozen times in the United States.

Under Oregon’s unique Medicaid system, which openly rations healthcare in order to provide basic care to as broad a population as possible, Brandy was eligible for a liver transplant or a lung transplant, but not both. In January, and again after a review in May, the state-run health plan said no. There wasn’t enough data to show the $250,000 procedure was worthwhile, the health plan’s administrators said, and the plan didn’t cover experiments.

But Brandy wouldn’t take no for an answer. A tough, determined young woman who had managed to work part-time at a photo studio, baby-sit her boss’s children, coach the high school football team and maintain a 3.2 grade point average between numerous and prolonged bouts in the hospital, Brandy wasn’t about to give up her life without a fight. She sued the state of Oregon, charging that it was making a flawed moral choice in refusing to save her life. Since then her caustic, articulate criticisms of the Oregon system have given a vivid sense of the obstacles any universal healthcare plan for the nation would face.

"They’ll pay for an alcoholic to get a liver transplant because they’ve been drinking all their life," she says, sitting with her mother at a rickety picnic table under a cherry tree by her front door. "They’ll pay for a heroin addict to get cured, to help someone kick the cigarette habit. Those are things people do to themselves. If you put it to a vote the people would say pay for some girl’s operation instead of some alcoholic’s liver transplant or some crack head’s needles. I just think it isn’t very fair.’"
http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/07/07/brandy/

Texas has also been the boldest in supporting the growing-in-popularity "futile care theory":
"Texas, however, has become ground zero for futile-care theory thanks to a draconian state law passed in 1999 — of dubious constitutionality, some believe — that explicitly permits a hospital ethics committee to refuse wanted life-sustaining care. Under the Texas Health and Safety Code, if the physician disagrees with a patient’s decision to receive treatment, he or she can take it to the hospital ethics committee. A committee hearing is then scheduled, all interested parties explain their positions, and the members deliberate in private.

If the committee decides to refuse treatment, the patient and family receive a written notice. At that point, the patient/family has a mere ten days to find another hospital willing to provide the care, after which, according to the statute, "the physician and health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment."

Since the patients threatened with death by ethics committee are often the most expensive to care for, it will often be difficult for families to find other institutions willing to accept a transfer. But the futility deck may be especially stacked against Houston patients. Many city hospitals participate in the "Houston City-Wide Guidelines on Medical Futility," raising the suspicion that participating hospitals will not contradict each other’s futility decrees.

If so, this would mean that patients seeking refuge from forced treatment termination will have to be transported to distant cities, as has already occurred in a few futile-care cases, perhaps even out of state. Illustrating the level of hardball some hospitals play against patients and families, the Clarke family’s lawyer Jerri Ward told me that St. Luke’s agreed to pay the $14,806 transportation costs to transfer Clarke to a hospital in Illinois — more than 1,000 miles away — if the decision to transfer is made on Thursday (4/27). If the family doesn’t decide until Friday, the hospital will pay only one-half of the cost of transportation. Thereafter, it would pay nothing."
http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200604271406.asp

Canada’s no better:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jonathan/rosenblum_golubchuk.php3?printer_friendly

Congrats on your wife’s recovery. If we don’t keep a free market, there will be a massive decrease in all medical research.

I agree it is needed!

Not sure what your question is. Hope your wife gets better soon.