The primary thing that is making health insurance unaffordable for those who do not have it is in fact the market distortions caused by those who do have someone else footing a large part of the bill for it. Those who have it use it without regard to the cost, because someone else is paying for it. It is a free lunch and those who have it stuff themselves at the trough.

Don’t settle for sub-par coverage, do the research. Understand that if you have a cheap package of insurance, you will also recieve cheap coverage.”

Thanks! I didn’t realize if I just paid more, I’d get better insurance – and I’d always stay in good health, and never lose coverage! And oh yeah, if I can’t do that, it’s my fault, gotcha. Wow, golden words – I’m rushing out now to engrave them on a plaque. Genius tip – don’t be poor or struggling financially. Wise advice, my friend.

Oh wait – I forgot. I was a successful marketing executive paying for gold-standard healthcare coverage when I got downsized. Husband and kids were on my health policy – I was the family’s primary breadwinner, and 3/4 of our income went “poof.” Husband added me to his policy, but his conservative Christian employers opted for the insurer plan that shifted most costs to employees save major hospitalization.
As our savings evaporated, the stock market tanked our IRAs and 401Ks. As our savings began to disappear, we barely made ends meet as I freelanced and consulted and took temp gigs and part time work while I looked for another corporate job. We stopped going to dentists, skipped doctor visits for regular checkups, flu and flu shots, strep throats, and even emergency rooms –
we couldn’t afford the copays and deductibles.

See, I actually WORKED – I didn’t rely on that government handout, unemployment insurance. Big mistake; by taking on consulting, freelance and temp work, I lost my eligibility and 27 weeks of unemployment. But “personal responsibility” always saves you, right guys? Must have been me -
I must not have tried hard enough.

Then Husband dumped me and the kids and split – his last parental act was dumping the kids off his company-provided private insurance and onto PeachCare. I paid for my COBRA coverage for as long as I could – at $800 bucks a month. Did I mention my ex was a conservative Repub? Seems he had a blind spot re that whole “personal responsibility” thing – no problem dumping on the taxpayers as long as he didn’t have to pay. I’d have taken an extra job on to afford private coverage, but I was already doing that to keep the mortgage paid.

No one will insure me now. But thanks to you, Thomas, I now see I must take more personal responsibility for this. I should have immediately foreseen that when my college fiancee voted for Reagan, he was showing me that he’d eventually turn out to be a “what’s mine is mine, screw you” narcissist in the end. Clearly, I was careless and irresponsible when the light fixture in my kitchen smashed me in the head causing two subdural hematomas requiring brain surgeries. I should have lectured my uterus with some stern talking to, before it went rogue and grew those irresponsible tumors. Didn’t they consider the cost of such actions?

I’m trying to get my mammaries to tow the line, but I’m failing; they’re obviously classic, stupid lazy liberals! You see, they’re “dense” like most libs – dragging down my household economy, demanding support: underwire bras, frequent mammograms, second looks and one biopsy. If they don’t shape up soon, I may have to have them cut off. But that’s what you have to do
with the unproductive, right Rush?

Might be genetic – my lazy children slacked off in the womb and managed to end up with congenital growth hormone problems and learning disabilities – hmm, maybe that was my fault, judging by my guilt. Must have been bad morals, you say? Drinking, drugging, promiscuity leading to STDs? Um, nope, tea-totalling Baptist girl here.

I’m so sick of slogan-spewing ideological autobots. Slogans work great, until they run up and slam into reality. Soviet Commie-bots recited them when collective farming and state five-year plans failed, but it didn’t matter; collective farming still just didn’t work. And Reagan’s “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem” is the same; it’s a lazy, cheap, easy cop-out that stuns its mindless chanter into a zombie-esque inability to actually look at the issues; successes, failures or exceptions to the rule.

Why do men get more conservative as they age, while women tend to trend liberal as they get older?
(Save the lecture – yes, there are exceptions) ‘Cause women are stupider, right?

Any single answer is probably too simplistic. But I think it may be that while many men judge their lives by their balance sheet and hold onto their assets ever more fiercely as they age, more women, by the time they’re a certain age, have been forced to interact much more deeply and personally with the brutal, messy day-to-day realities of life. Most of them don’t have the luxury of genuflecting at the altars of Ayn Rand and Adam Smith and spouting ideological hoo-hah: They’ve got breast cancer pink magnetic ribbons, not “Who is John Galt?”

They’re tending critically ill children and/or aging parents. They’ve wiped the behinds and changed the adult diapers of elderly fathers with incontinence and Alzheimers, watching them weep with humiliation …fought, begged and pleaded with nursing homes, hospitals and clinic staff, and yes, health insurers. They struggle to pay for premiums, medical bills and groceries; they’re the ones standing in the aisle in tears at Walmart, trying to decide if they should put back the apples for the kids so they can fill their own high blood pressure prescription, or forgo filling theirs, so Mom can get hers this time. We’ve had to shovel a lot of manure in our lives, and can smell steaming piles of it from miles away. And we recognize the sound of phony excuses – we’ve heard ‘em all from our kids.

How dare you. How DARE you suggest this woman was a plant, that her problems were manufactured, or of her own making, or a trivial inconvenience easily solved with a few neighbor potlucks and church volunteer visits? Most of my neighbors are nice enough, but won’t take the time to pick up their dog’s poo from my yard, much less offer to help tend a critically injured stranger with a feeding tube. Are you freaking kidding me?

I’ve been well-off, middle class, and poor and most steps in between, and I know whereof I speak. God forgive me, it’s hard not to fervently wish that some of the self-righteous wingnuts posting here live long enough for life to ream them squarely where the sun don’t shine, giving them the educational opportunity to experience for themselves the fates they so callously consign to their imagined “inferiors.”

When and if it happens, pray God shows them more mercy than they show the weak, “irresponsible” “losers” and “parasites” they so despise.

There are some things that, by virtue of being human (start acting like one) people DO have a right to.

Some things are relative luxury (phones, TV, electricity, cars). Some are minimal necessities.

If you want to live in a world where you can roll a die and on a “1″ you live the poor life for the rest of your life regardless of what you do (childhood diabetes for example) and on a “6″ you remain perfectly healthy and financially strong despite years of smoking then go ahead and keep the status quo. But if you think we should be more compassionate than that, if you think no one deserves to have a crappy life because of bad genes or an accident that wasn’t their fault, then vote for health care change.

And to drive the point home, do you “personal responsibility” right wingers know anyone who chooses to smoke more because they have excellent health care? You see, not everything is about money. Some things are about life and quality of life. The threat of cancer and death is proving sufficient to stop someone from smoking. The additional threat of poverty is just plain cruel.

Take the personal responsibility tactic where it matters, in these other realms, or in health care for OPTIONAL procedures, but basic necessities, you’re off your rocker.

Ques for the minions: You will fight for my right to be born–BUT–you will not fight for my right to live! Why.

Americans rarely see the most advanced technologies that are available in the United States in the odd research facility, and these usually at government funded university hospitals. In most of Europe technologies that only the wealthy get here are commonly available to everyone, regardless of income.

The idiocy about how many Americans believe capitalism us better than socialism is primarily bases on the fact that most Americans are ignorant about both and have experienced neither.

The defense of the current health care situation by the average ignorant right winger that they have more choice in health care here in America than most European do in Europe is case in point. The average worker with employer based health insurance has the much fewer health care choices than the average European. That is to say, your employer tell YOU who is going to be your insurance company or at bests offers you a choice of two or three out of the roughly one thousand health insurance companies in America. Then your health insurance company limits what hospitals you can go to, which doctors you can see, what medicines you can take, and so on. In all but two countries of the European Union, those who live in countries that have some form of universal health coverage can choose from any of the health insurers in their country and any doctor and any hospital.

A person living in Germany can live in Munich and choose a company in Hamburg as their health insurer. A person in the United States living in Georgia CANNOT select an insurer in Florida or New York or any other of the fifty states if that would be better for them.

Americans are far more propagandized and just plain ignorant than the most poorly educated European.

Republicans are always asserting that tort reform is the answer to the health care crisis in the United States. However the experience of the last 20 years of tort reform has proven this completely false. Republicans pushing for tort reform know that the only benefiaries of tort reform are the doctors and the insurance companies. In the 24 states in which tort reform has been law for close to 20 years now, doctors have had their malpractice insurance costs drop, but the savings have not been passed down to the patient nor has the savings resulted in lower health insurance costs for the self insured or those with employer based insurance. In fact in most states where tort reform and limits to malpractice awards have been put into places have seen the cost of health care rise at higher than national averages. After Texas put tort reform into effect, health insurance premiums started going up at faster and faster rates. Largely because if a doctor harms someone and is protected from paying for that damage, the patient needs more medical care regardless of the malpractice and since the doctors and their malpractice insurance no longer provide the money to pay the medical bills, someone has to, usually the patients insurance if they still can keep it, or the public, if they cannot pay their medical bills after they have been harmed by the doctors.

And this was found to be the reality in cases where medical tort reform has been passed. Someone who was once in good health and did not need to spend much money on medical care who is harmed by a doctor during surgery ends up needed MORE medical care than they did before the doctors malpractice. They now need to use more of their own health insurance benefits, or they need to use public benefits but in any case, the cost of treating them being shifted onto the general risk pool ends up costing a lot more than the effect of malpractice cases or malpractice insurance does.

In most medical malpractice cases, the injured party is going to need extremely expensive additional health care, usually for life. If the guilty parties do not pay, then the cost is passed on to everyone.

Republicans have blocked all efforts to tag on amendments requiring that doctors and insurance companies pass on any savings realized by tort reform for this reason.