[Grumpy]

Hi Zorro,
I think all insurance on healthcare is a mistake. Having insurance does not guarentee a person good healthcare-it does the opposite. It takes away ALL power from the consumer. Insurance has contributed to the rise in costs of healthcare by demanding all these unnecessary testing, doctors having to hire staff to take care of the paperwork, Cover your *** unneccesary testing, delays in treatments for conservative measures that we know in many cases will not work but drives up the cost- PT is one, and temporary procedures like the radiofrequency thing I'm getting Sept 5 which is only going to delay the surgery-not stop it.
If there wasn't any insurance, the power returns to the consumer and they can say YES or NO-then the medical profession has to return to satisfying the consumer-not the insurance company.
Many of us are suffering from cronic pain with no confirmed solution yet they make us go to the pain doc every single month (ca ching ca ching $1200 a year down the tubes just for pain meds) .

Mammograms...this is the biggest joke and waste of money. I stopped getting them after my best friend was Dx with breast cancer, that also spread to her brain and lungs...she had a negitive mammogram the week before she passed out and was rushed to the hospital where they found the cancer. and this is only one story...I have more.Yet they push them on women giving them false security. The only true way of testing for breast cancer is a breast MRI, which I now get every other year. And yes, I'll pay for it out of pocket if my insurance won't cover it.
If everyone checked their bill after a hospital stay, you will find stuff added to that bill that you never got...but people don't do this since insurance pays the bills. But they don't know what you got and did not get-only you. Once (in Florida) in a 3 day stay in the hospital, $3500 of a $6,000 bill (this is back in '94) was testing I never got. SOMEONE has to pay for all the FREE healthcare we are giving out to anyone who walks into the hospital in an emergency. People arriving by plane from other countries, sick, that head right for the hospitals in Miami, get free healthcare. It was on the news that a hospital got sued in Miami for finally kicking out a foreigner with a $12 million dollar bill, plus a bunch of legal bills trying to get him out. THIS has got to stop! You should be able to prove you are an American citizen. YOU, ME and our neighbor is paying for this guy!

Not only that, but MEDICARE actually made the cost of medical care go UP. Sure, people 65 and over don't have to pay, so everyone else has to pay for them. Young families with 3 kids and a high mortgage...this is not fair but the AARP is a strong special interest group. And there is no control over the charges. Case in point: my friends mother in law was 92, one leg, blind, and wanted to MOVE ON if you get my drift...she broke her hip while turning in bed...guess what the doctors did? Yup-a new hip paid for by all of us, which she didn't want. Oh, and yes, she died a week later.

If all insurance was stopped, the doctors wouldn't need all that help in the offices doing all the insurance paperwork, and we would have total control.Then people can get medical savings accounts, tax deductable, with what they were paying the insurance companies for insurance that is crappy anyway. Oh, and yes, we need TORK Control...so the lawyers can't sue for $30 million dollars cause some unproven problem can't be blamed on the doctor which drives their malpractice thru the roof. If there was tork control, the stupid lawsuits would stop overnight.

Back in the 1950's the medical system was not broken and doctors made housecalls cause the people were the customers. The system didn't get broken till insurance and lawyers entered the field. Medicare made it worse-and a Federally Insured program would be a disaster-the last nail on the coffin.

I have the best insurance-the cadillac of insurance-am I getting good healthcare? NOT. Cause I am not in control of my own health. I have to do what the insurance companies tell me I have to do, and in what order.

Trust me, having insurance is not the end all, and does not guareentee good health care.