To me, the whole Health Care situation comes down to one fundamental question.  Is Health Care a good (to be bought and sold) or a right (that everyone is entitled to)?  Once you answer that question, you can design a system around it.  I know a lot of "Darwinist" people who say, "Health Care is a good.  If you can't afford it, tough."  I tend to have some Darwinist attitudes, too, but I don't think it's a good idea (or a practical idea) to try to base a Health Care system on Darwinism. 

Will you be the doctor who tells the illegal immigrant mother that she and her baby are going to have to die because she doesn't have health insurance?  If you will, you sound like a heartless bastard to me.  More important, I don't think that doctors are likely to do that.  Despite some people's thoughts to the contrary, the doctors I know didn't get into it for the money.  They got into medicine to help people, and sincerely care about people's health.  They make a lot of money because 1) they're highly skilled, and 2) they work their asses off. 

Since doctors don't always refuse treatment to people who can't pay, we have a situation where everyone gets treated, but only some people pay.  That doesn't work.  There are 43 million uninsured people in the US who can't afford to get preventive care, so when they DO get sick or injured, it's catastrophic.  A problem that could have been fixed early for a few hundred dollars winds up costing tens or hundreds of thousands!  They can't pay it - if they could afford it they would have had insurance, remember?  Then those of us WITH health insurance have to pay our bills AND theirs. 

There's a reason they don't have health insurance - it's expensive as hell and only getting worse!  In my last job I was paying over $300 / month for my wife and daughter, and the coverage sucked.  I know people who are paying a lot more than that, and prices are rising at ridiculous rates.  In California right now there are 9 separate labor strikes over health insurance coverage.  Employers can't afford it, and neither can employees. 

Add to that the Ambulance-Chasing lawyers like John Edwards, NC's senior senator, and you have a situation where the doctors can't afford their own  malpractice insurance.  That's just ri-goddamn-diculous, when someone who's making hundreds of thousands of $$s per year can't afford their own insurance!  But I am convinced that if there's a nickel to be stolen from someone, there's a lawyer out there who will sue them to take it and demand 40%.

So is health care a good or a right?  It can't be both.  It can only be treated as a good if those who can't afford it are consistently denied treatment.  That's not the case now, and I don't think it should be.  What's our other option?  Socialized medicine.  Waiting lines.  Less R&D.  Lower quality care for everyone on average.  But if health care costs keep going like they are now, health care will bankrupt this country.  With a baby-boomer turning 50 every 6 seconds, do you really think health care costs are going to decrease in the future?  Wait until they're all retired!  The drain on companies will make it impossible to continue to provide retiree benefits.  Then, universal coverage will be mandated, guaranteed.  Everybody will be covered under Medicare, which was the original intent of Medicare in the first place. Read up on it if you like.

Wait and see.  Hopefully we won't wait until it's too late. 

Later,

Chuck