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Whatever happened to the good old days when Obama was Stalin and Healthcare Reform was just Communism?

Then again, we have the whole "free healthcare" thing going on down here in Canada, and, as I'm sure you all know, we're pretty well known for our Nazism.

Health care is such a pain to hammer out because some people are asking for concessions that are insane.
Republicans don't want a public plan to cover abortion or birth control (like many current plans) because allowing a legal medical procedure to be medically deductible is the same thing as encouraging it to be done all the time (cancer is usually covered, I never see anyone harping about how now people are all going out eating uranium, getting cancer willy-nilly so they can have chemo). There are people who don't want a public option because it means people who "don't deserve" health care would get some. Like smokers, heavy people, basically people who are "willing killing themselves" already and therefore don't deserve health coverage. Someone was at one point bitching that since the government wouldn't be running a for-profit heath care system, they would make the insurance companies look bad (like the don't already, and I'm sick of how much profit they make compared to how little coverage they give).

I think it's one of those things where you can't really meet in the middle, it's either one or the other. And since the democrats have a majority, GET OFF YOUR BUTTS AND GROW SOME STONES.

Who will really look bad are the pharmaceutical companies. Who I really don't think have been mentioned enough when discussing the high prices of health care.

Granted, they will defend their high costs for newly developed drugs by saying they have to put a good 10 years of research into a product before its ready for the clinical market.

Some of that is the FDA's fault (really, you need to test a drug on 3 *species*, e.g. rodent, primate, canine, of animals to test for toxicity? When those animals might not even have the same reactions to a drug a person would, and even after doing toxicity tests on cell cultures?), but... I'm sorry. You get federal grants for cancer, HIV and other NIH funded studies, yet those are the drugs that are the most expensive. Additionally, those are the patients that are booted off health care plans, and go bankrupt with the ensuing medical bills.

Once you have cancer, even if its leukemia, that you've had IN THE WOMB and are essentially cured of by the time you are two years old, you will never be covered by any insurance carrier.

Apparently, they are already thinking of getting rid of the more aggressive changes, and just going with legislation related to what insurance companies will be able to do (or not do as in the case of denying coverage). Honestly, if even just that passes, I will be happy. Because it's better than nothing-- as long as it does not take until 2012 to pass through.

Oh, and limiting malpractice suits to 300,000 or whatever they said is ridiculous too. Doctors are people, and they can make mistakes, just like everyone else. And I really doubt they would cut the neurosurgeons and other high-risk areas a break, even if something like that did pass.

You learn quickly how many free programs there are out there, which ones you're eligible for and how to get on them. State run heath care programs are a godsend, especially since by the time a state cares enough to run them, they've probably got a whole network set up for your use. More states should get on board with that. California keeps attempting some sort of effort but it stalls out every time. Illinois has tried at least twice that I know of, no idea if it ever went anywhere.

It's the one really shitty thing about freelance. Not only do you pay twice the taxes (employer AND employee!), but there's no way to get on a group plan, you foot the whole bill yourself. Unfortunately none of the artist organized health care plans exist in my state, fortunately Minnesota is about the greatest state to get public healthcare in.

Missouri doesn't have anything to help me out. I'm sitting on top of about 10k worth of unpayable bills right now from surgery. I don't even want to know how much this next medical issue is going to cost. That's why I'm putting it off until January when we are supposed to get on Brian's work's insurance. Of course, depending on how my surgeon documented it, that could be a pre-existing condition. He knew we were without insurance though, so hopefully he knew how to set it up for me. He was nice.

In this state, you have to be disabled or have kids to get help, essentially. The Hospital/doctor's way of helping is "well, you can do a payment plan?" Of course, when you have a stack of bills that are all on payment plans, it can get a little tedious and hard to cover.

The Post Office is not "run" by the government. It receives NO money from the government. You should see what privatized postal services in other countries are like. In Italy, they deliver your mail if they feel like it. They use packages as furniture in the post office. And if things get old, they just burn them.

Well, I'm largely "small government", so if the states took over and were the ones running the healthcare projects, that wouldn't be as bad. I'm also not necessarily against nationally-run healthcare. I just think that given the (very) flawed systems we currently have, coupled with the rather crappy current economy, it would be a lot better in the long run if there was reform first, and a cleaning up/fixing what we have other in areas before the .gov decides to embark on something a massive as nationalized healthcare.