It do suck...  I have a broken finger right now,.. I won't pay  a few grand for a doctor and x-rays just to have them tape a splint to it,...  
When I was a kid, I broke my arm,.. it cost $65 for an x-ray and a cast... if I'd been in England, it would have cost nothing...
Today,.. it would cost $8,000.... in England it would cost nothing....

Medical extortion is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US...  it's not laziness, or credit card binges, or gambling, or even job loss or divorce...
It's sudden catastrophic illness...  
Can you spare $40,000?... $180,000?... or $1.3 million?...
I don't even understand how they can speak of such numbers...
And if you have insurance,.. believe me, they will try to cancel it through any loophole they can find...
This happened to Skatergirl, if you remember, and she fought them from her deathbed...
How horrible that she spent those days worrying about costs...

Jerry,... you know I'm not talking about what your co-pay is...

Im disabled, on medicade, or care,, whatever..

fell, ripped a previously wounded rotator cuff.

MRI, My cost, bout $90.
Co-Pay to the Dr, all told, gonna be around $700.00, I think.
I owe the anesthesiologist $25.00
Ive had a physical therapist coming to my house now for weeks, at first, it was M_W-F, now just M/F, My cost? Zero..

Hospital charge on the bill
$38,000.00, which Ill be paying about $600.00..

Considering the pain, the absolute necessity of the surgery, all combined, I am absolutely tickled with the health care system, as is,,
Im not seein it be so good in the future,


Well,, Actually, I was MUCH more impressed when I was in my 20's. I paid about $10.00 a month to carry a Blue Cross Blue Shield card & could walkinto any dr office & get help.. Not now,,

Serowbot -
You're probably right, but I like the slow process of American legislation, and I don't think it is ugly.  Here's why:

Haste makes waste - old saying, but like most old sayings, it has a lot of truth behind it.

Are you English?  Your comment in this thread about English health care made me wonder.

Look what has happened since WW II in England, with hasty legislation.  The Liberals were in power shortly after the war, and they nationalized the railroads, coal mines, and most of the English auto industry.  The country's economy fell into disaster.  Then here come the Conservatives, and reverse much of that nationalization.  Talk about a yoyo - total reversal of national policies, almost overnight.  No stability at all to their economy through most of the post war period until the late 1970s.

I like a slow, thoughtful and deliberate process of making important decisions.  Sure, rarely there are emergencies that have to be dealt with quickly, such as the 2008 financial meltdown, but thankfully, those emergencies are indeed rare.  For everything else, history has shown me that a measured pace of debate, experience, and decision making based on that debate and experience works best.

Serowbot wrote on 08/14/13 at 22:50:13:


I understand your concern for the high costs but what you are failing to take into account is the rationing that takes place in England and Canada to keep costs down as the expense on human pain and suffering. $ hour wait to get into the ER, 12 month wait for hip replacement, 18 month wait for knee replacement, mandatory blindness from macular degeneration in one eye before treatment for the remaining eye.

You can pay the $8,000 now or spend a week in near unbearable pain to pay the $8,000 in vastly inflated taxes now. Choice is yours.

Look at the health care systems in successful countries, duplicate it here. Pretty simple concept.

But thats not what they did, AND, we are BROKE as a nation,,
You increase you kids allowance when you cant pay th bills?