Reform and Your Premiums

Why is the debate about making health insurance affordable and not making health care affordable? Where is the analysis of what is driving up the costs of health care, making it unaffordable, and addressing the underlying issues? - free care by hospital ERs (the most expensive place for us to deliver free care), malpractice insurance/tort reform (also contributing to unnecessary procedures), the army of bureaucrats within hospitals and physician groups to deal with the various insurance companies (including Medicare), drug pricing, common medical errors and hospital acquired infections, lack of quality/price transparency...I'm sure the list goes on. Those who have insurance, myself included, have no idea what the costs are of various procedures or the disparities between providers. Therefore, there's no incentive question them or to shop around. For example, I recently learned that my child's pediatric dentist charges $150 per tooth for a sealant intended to prevent cavities because her teeth are grooved (aren't they all?). My own dentist, performing the procedure on adult permanent teeth, charges $75 per tooth. Not only is there a significant price disparity, but I as a consumer am not convinced that the procedure is really necessary since she will lose these teeth in a couple of years. How much of us really know what's being paid on our behalf for routine medical checks or procedures? Everyone's answer to this is single payer, but I don't trust a national system subject to shifting political ideology and Congressional oversight...particularly when there seems to be no discussion of government officials taking part in this system. I agree the insurance companies need to be removed from the equation, but in order to also address all the others feeding at the trough there needs to be more personal responsibility for health care and its costs - perhaps that means paying for it like any other consumer service.

Abortion and Health Care Reform

What a joy it must be to live in a truly free country. Either abortion is legal or it isn't. Since it is a legal medical procedure every health plan should pay for it. We are supposed to have freedom of religion in this country, but certain parties are oblivious to that. The pro-life crowds are hypocrites who only care about life in the womb, but care nothing about the lives of people who have already been born. It's time they kept their religious beliefs to themselves, and stopped forcing them down the throats of everyone else. Most religious beliefs are based on fairy tales and mythology, and have very little to do with morality and ethics. They are based on nothing but control, especially the control of women.

It is not rational to force a woman to bear and then raise a child she doesn't want simply because she had sex. Where the ‘respect for life’ is when unwanted children are born into the world? Many of the world's criminals were mistreated as children because their parents didn’t want them. I don't see society stepping up to raise these children who are born to reluctant mothers/ parents. Pro-lifers only think of the birth of the child- they don't consider the life of the child.

Abortion needs to be covered by any health care insurance system. It is ironic that those who would deny abortion coverage in order to protect an unborn human life care nothing for ensuring that any baby born, including those with severe disabilities, have a means of support medical or otherwise once they are out of the womb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/opinion/01thu1.html