Mark M.

There is a seven pound, 90percent efficient dialysis machine being made by Home Dialysis Plus/Oregon State College of Engineering.

The solution to the cost of health care is not more government programs, it is a free market health care system. In this system, you will choose your physicians and hospital. Then, if you have high health insurance costs, say over $2,000.00 per year, that need would be met by a high deductible policy, which in a free market system, would be cheap. Most people never even come close to needing that type of policy, just a small minority, which I am one. Who should be in charge of your healthcare, you or the government, or the insurance companies? It is estimated that if we eliminated all of the regulations that are encountered by the drug industry, drug prices would be at about 15 percent of what they currently charge for medication. I need a fair amount of medication, I would love to pay only 15 percent of the current cost, sounds good to me.

You have to remember, regulation=cost. With HillaryCare, we will have tons of regulations, so we will have tons of cost! Why should the people that cannot afford to pay for this new bureaucracy, pay for it? You say, they will tax the rich! Well, sadly, there are not enough rich people to fund this mandate, so they will come after the middle class.

Less regulation=less cost, that makes everyone happy.

Mark M.

Cincinnati, Ohio

John Stossel is at the opposite end of the scale to Michael Moore. The truth lies in the middle. Here in Canada a family pays approximately $108 per month for medical coverage on our universal health care plan. Single people pay about $95. Most employers cover the premium cost. Everyone has to pay in to the plan. If you don’t pay in you will eventually be forced to pay the same as if you didn’t pay your taxes. On the plan you never, ever are denied coverage even if you haven’t paid in for years. That’s a seperate issue which the government will handle in it’s own way. You can choose any doctor you wish. You can have more than one doctor. We have walk in clinics where you can go without an appointment. You can go as many times as you like but who would want to? It is not even an issue. Yes we have some long waits for operations. We are working on that and wait times are being reduced. We are starting to move towards a system that we call “semi-private” where you will have the option of paying an extra fee to avoid the wait and get treated in a private clinic. The point I would like to make is that our health care is guaranteed with a universal health care plan. The concept of someone “losing their insurance” is unheard of under this system. Yes, it is subsidized through our taxes but on the other hand we don’t have to pay huge premiums to private insurers. There aren’t any insurance companies making a profit on the system. But to really put it into perspective here are some true to life examples. We were a young couple and my wife had quit work to have our first baby. Then I got laid off of my job. Suddenly we went from two incomes to none. I did find some work right away but it didn’t pay much. Then the baby came. My wife had a private room in the hospital for two or three days. Everything was fine. Then I got a bill from the hospital. It was for $27 for the private room! I gladly paid it. If she hadn’t gotten the private room there wouldn’t have been a bill. One of our sons had to have his tonsils removed. No bill. Another son had to have stitches – no bill.I have had a hernia repaired, a bunion removed from my big toe and some orthescopic knee surgery over the years. No bills. Nada, zip, zilch. My mother, a pensioner was in a rest home and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. The bill was $47 for the ambulance; zero for the four day stay in the hospital. I recently got a letter saying that her income had gone up and that she would now have to pay $10 per month for the medical plan. I gladly paid it. A few months later another letter came saying that she had been re-assessed and that her monthly premium would again drop to zero as she was considered to be a low income senior. My mother in law, a pensioner, had to have a pace maker installed. No bill. We have not always had a universal health care plan. It was brought in some time in the sixties after much debate. The concept is that no individual will be denied basic medical care no matter what their station or income. No, it isn’t perfect but it is a good system and you would never find a Canadian who would trade it for anything else.

Very helpful. Thanks.

Pat

I attended a Cato conference a few years ago on HIPAA. There Dick Armey said:

1-Hillary Care I didn’t get out of committee because Armey’s office circulated a chart depicting what HC I would look like. It resembled about 100 octopi with their tentacles all entangled.

2-HIPAA was one-third of HC I.

Hillary has said she never recommended socialized medicine. I think that is correct. The 1400 pages of HC I are medical FASCISM, in which all the private elements of healthcare are micromanaged from within the beltway–worse than single-payer.