The point is 16% of the people DON’T PAY FOR IT AT ALL, and they should.
24% are inadequately covered, which means they too go bankrupt (that means they don’t pay the bills) when they have catastrophic health care expenses.

So, that’s 4 out of 10 people, 40%, whose cost can shift to everyone else if they have expensive catastrophic costs.

In the US, The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act also ensures public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. There is a $1,000 surcharge Now in health care premiums in the US to cover people who receive treatment in emergency rooms.

The number one best way to reduce the health care costs is to have everone pay into the system. That’s what insurance does, right, spread the risks around!

Single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems, because doctors are in the private sector.
Single-payer systems simply eliminate the Insurance company’s profit.
I do like the idea of non-profit co-ops, but everyone needs to be insured.

Corporations do ration health care now, or more appropriately shift costs to the tax payers, by denying people coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Corporations want the cream of the crop to make profit on, not the sick who need health care.

And, with over 3 million injuries each year due to car wrecks (and that’s over 120,000 a year in Georgia alone), it would all help the health care costs in America if people didn’t drive like freaking speeding and tailgaiting terrorists!

Basically, as I said, we pay for universal health care now via emergency room visits. What we need is an equitable way of paying for it where everyone really does pay into it and eliminate profits by insurance companies who’s main mission is to deny, or ration, care for their profit. I do like the idea of having both a public and private option competing for America. If the private plans can’t continue it will be because American’s will eventually not choose them. That’s a choice that we don’t have now just like we don’t have a choice now to pay for those emergency care visits and bankruptcies.

There is a $1,000 surcharge Now in health care premiums to cover people who receive treatment in emergency rooms.

From 1999 through 2008, annual health insurance premiums jumped 119 percent, according to Kaiser data. The average family premium paid by workers rose from $1,543 to $3,354 a year, and employer payments per worker jumped from $4,247 to $9,325.

If we are spending twice as much and have at least the same health care outcome as Canada, then why spend twice as much?

Why pay a middle-man (Insurance)?

2. Quality: A peer-reviewed comparison study of health care access in the two countries published in 2006 concluded that U.S. residents are one third less likely to have a regular medical doctor, one fourth more likely to have unmet health care needs, and are more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines.[16] The study noted that access problems “were particularly dire for the US uninsured.” Those who lack insurance in the U.S. were much less satisfied, less likely to have seen a doctor, and more likely to have been unable to receive desired care than both Canadians and insured Americans.

In both Canada and the United States , access to health care can be a problem. Studies suggest that 40% of US citizens and 5% of Canadian citizens lack adequate access to health care.

For example, according to a 2007 Consumer Reports study on the U.S. health care system, the underinsured account for 24% of the U.S. population and live with skeletal health insurance that barely covers their medical needs and leaves them unprepared to pay for major medical expenses. When added to the population of uninsured (approximately 16% of the U.S. population), a total of 40% of Americans ages 18–64 have inadequate access to health care, according to the Consumer Reports study.

Also, based on 2003 data from the Canadian Community Health Survey,[36] an estimated 1.2 million (5%) of Canadians report that they do not have a regular doctor because they “cannot find” one, and just over twice that number report they do not have one because they “haven’t looked”. Those Canadians without a regular doctor are 3.5 times more likely to visit an emergency room for treatment.

In the World Health Organization’s ratings of health care system performance among 191 member nations published in 2000, Canada ranked 30th and the U.S. 37th, while the overall health of Canadians was ranked 35th and Americans 72nd.

They concluded, “Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.” Guyatt identified 38 studies addressing conditions including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies with the strongest statistical validity, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 were equivalent or mixed. Of 28 weaker studies, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 were equivalent or mixed. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada with a 5% advantage, but the results were weak and varied. The only consistent pattern was that Canadian patients fared better in kidney failure.

Canadians are, overall, statistically healthier than Americans and show lower rates of many diseases such as various forms of cancer.

A Canadian systematic review concluded that differences in the health care systems of Canada and the United States could not alone explain differences in health care outcomes. Toronto: Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, June 1999. (Publication no. 99-04-TR.)

Cost: single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems, because doctors are in the private sector.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act also ensures public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay.

The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[5] In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was US$6,714; in Canada, US$3,678.[5] The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%.[5] In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. Total government spending per capita in the U.S. on health care was 23% higher than Canadian government spending, and U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private).

60% of bankruptcies in America are due to medical bills.

Just as the common folk in the South fought for the Slave Owners to keep their slaves during the Civil War so do sick and dying republicans fight to keep going bankrupt so free market myths can continue be perpetraited making short term profits for insurance companies.

Republicans don’t like the government spending money on anything but jails, wars, walls on the Mexican Border and torture at Guantanamo Bay. It’s so sad that in the age of enlightenment we have so many who persist in such dark age thinking.

Georgia, first in Bigotry and Prisons, last in Education and Democracy.

In fact, what hasn’t gotten worse under Republican control?

1. Access – Countries who have implemented socialized medicine attempt to manage costs by rationing access to medical care. That’s why Canada has significantly fewer CT machines per capita, as an example, when compared with the U.S. With fewer scanners, Canada rations access to diagnostic treatments that can detect serious health difficulties.

2. Quality – When has the federal government ever provided quality anything? Who questions the quality of U.S. healthcare? Certainly not the people who come to the U.S. for treatment from those countries who have nationalized healthcare. If Socialized Medicine provides such fantastic care, why aren’t people sneaking into Cuba for their cardiovascular surgeries? People who compare other countries with the U.S. in terms of a single factor only (such as life expectancy) disregard the variety of variables that affect one’s longevity.

3. Cost – Does any sane person believe that the cost for healthcare will decrease when the government takes over the system completely? With a single-payer system, a monopoly is created. Monopolies stifle innovation, don’t reward commitment to patients, and add cost because there is no competition. Think Phone Company, Cable Company, Dept. of Motor Vehicles, Post Office.

With Socialized Medicine, the unmistakable outcome is (1) reduced access to medical care, (2) degraded quality, and (3) higher cost.

Politicians can be (almost) excused for loving so-called Universal Healthcare because it consolidates their power over the citizen. Statists revel in acquiring this most personal stranglehold on the American citizen.

But thinking people (which excludes politicians) cannot support this extreme measure of government power because even a cursory examination of the proposition reveals that the patient loses while the politician wins.

If you think you’ll get something for free, you will: A raw deal.

This is one psychiatrist who has retired my license rather than play the lose-lose game of trying to provide common sense solutions to problems created by our crazy-making society. When you spend your money on insurance instead of services, as Medicare and Obama’s plan will show, your only guarantee is you will pay every month. Insurance skims profits off the top and obstructs health care whenever possible.

The idea that doctors are exploiting patients is a myth. Doctors are caught in the trap of debt and overhead, victims, too of a system that pays all the wrong people to manage their health and lives.

Congress needs to get out of the health care business or start writing the prescriptions. They can dictate universal health care, but they will drive doctors like me from the system, and access to doctors will be more and more difficult. Obama and Congress are practicing medicine without licenses, the training, or the understanding that health is the norm, not the exception, and feeding unhealthy attitudes and health profiteers will only collapse the US economy and debilitate its people that much faster.

if you look at the number of deaths and the number of infections, and compare that to the flu strain of the year, you will see that the H1N1 is actually less problematic. we need more flu vaccines, but because society seems to be enamored with the doom and gloom of H1N1, precious resources have been diverted.

The simple fact remains, almost all of the people infected with H1N1 recover without any special care.

“John has to make his own personal decision relative to his family as well as the political side of this,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said of Ensign. “He’s got to get his personal life in order, and that comes first.”

Chambliss said Ensign shouldn’t resign.