No, that's what you're advocating.

That's like saying that I "advocate" aging and mortality. It's the reality. If firing accusatory slogans would make it go away, we'd all join in.

I'm literally witnessing it every day with a couple friends who've hit hard times. The day-to-day decisions they're making are purly financially based.

It does happen- not so long ago a respected Fox guru passed away after I understand she had neglected her healthcare needs to try to retain her home. To quote your own logic: is this what you are "advocating" as a cool solution for the USA? It wouldn't happen anywhere else in the free world, fwiw.

Way to go nuclear. High-risk insurance pools could be made to handle this and the other nuclear example of "pre-existing conditions". They already exist in 30+ states and if properly incentivized could be expanded to all. As a bonus they would alleviate the pressure on emergency room traffic by shifting patients without insurance for these reasons to specialists.

If you do away with Medicare, you'll have to load seniors with their 50% healthcare costs into that "insurance". IOW you'll still be paying all those costs with no lower-risk members to offset the cost. Sounds like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic to me.

A reexamination of their data suggests that medical bills are a contributing factor in just 17 percent of personal bankruptcies and that those affected tend to have incomes closer to poverty level than to middle class. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/short/25/2/w74

Those are the earlier 2006 rebuttals. Another paper was published this year with more recent 2007 figures: http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2809%2900404-5/abstract ... medical bankruptcies "conservatively" now up to 62%, 75% of whom had medical insurance.

Blaming capitalism for the current problems with our health industry is a false-argument. Proposing more government in the face of nearly 50% current involvement in said problematic industry is by definition insane.

What a charming fallacy. Government is involved in almost 100% of problematic school shootings as well. Which has *nothing* to do with government involvement in schooling. Unless we can address the underlying issues for problems, there's not much more to be said.

Rationing is alive and well in in the insurance industry, in medicare and with the individual. Again, this comes down to in a free society, who does the rationing. My choice is the individual.

Easy enough to say when you're not facing selling your farm to pay for desperate treatment that may save your child. But as long as you have free choice whether to sell your farm or relegate your child to certain death, I guess you'll regard the system as a success. Others may regard that as a decision that we are wealthy enough not to impose on each other in 2009.

You're right, and as I look to Massachusetts, Hawaii, Tennessee, Britain and Canada I see the real-world effects of what's currently being proposed here, namely less care, fewer doctors and greater costs. When I look to Texas and Mississippi I see the real-world effects of the reforms I'm talking about actually reducing costs and encouraging doctors to practice. In the real-world, my theory holds up and others fail.

Okie-dokie. Your theories will overcome $3M per person needed to shoulder healthcare costs because all the early surpluses are sucked away as profit. Well done. And good luck.