Dragan,

In the U.S. as I'm sure you know by now, the medical insurance coverage each person possesses and pays for is typically decided upon by the employer. The company enters an agreement with carriers and signs a contract which then binds the company to contributing a percentage of the costs along with the employee. The medical insurance benefits received by the employee can depend entirely on the contract or agreement between the employer and the carrier. It is often very stressful when the company changes it agreement and signs with a new insurance carrier. Often the employee has to locate a new primary care giver that is willing to abide by the 'agreed' or 'contractural' prices between the carrier and the medical person. Additionally, the doctor or medical facility has to agree to accept the approved cost that they are allowed to charge for services and to not attempt to receive additional funds from the employee other than the reimburseable costs agreed upon in the contract. Sometimes, if an individual has a condition that is being treated and his/her company changes medical insurance, it can be a problem getting treatment for a 'pre-existing medical condition' from the new insurance carrier.

Personally, I do not want government administered medical coverage. However, I would like to see standard medical insurance available to all for a reasonable cost but not for free. In other words, if you work for a small company of fewer than 25 employees and I work for a large corporation with thousands of employees, I believe that we BOTH should have the opportunity to have the same medical insurance coverages and contribute via our employers and receive the same benefits. There can be many plans and different levels of coverages to choose from, but the same choices should be availabe to all employed citizens of this country. You pay your portion as we do now but the choices should be available to all from their employers no matter the company size.




>>YIKES. I agree with you on one point: I would love to have free medical care in this country. However, I do not support it and will not ever because:
>>
>>Nothing in life worth having is free. I would still be paying for it from my taxes or you, someone next door, my sister, aunt, or uncle would be paying for my medical care from their taxes. Those that pay taxes would be supporting those that do not. It would be an incentive to be lazy and do nothing and let the government be all for you. Hence, we would be a socialist society, not a free capitalist society. I want to decide where my money goes. I do not want to put it all into a 'pot' and let over half of it go to administrators making those decisions for me. And where would it stop? Where does it state that human rights include free medical care? What about free housing then? Free food? Free entertainment? Where do we stop? Where is the incentive for our citizens to put forth any effort to do anything to attain anything? If you want a free life move to Vermont. :o) Free healthcare is also not everything it is cracked up to be. I know an eye surgeon that spent time in
>>London teaching and observing her students in a prominent hospital in London perform eye surgery. The surgeons would actually leave a patient that had waited literally months for surgery on the table sedated while they took a lunch break. On top of that they would drink alcohol at lunch. Sheesh, talk about scary. How to complain when something is free? Also, if there is no incentive (respect, achievement, admiration, competition) for the doctors to do better, why would they? This is a very controversial subject in the U.S. today and not likely to be solved anytime soon. I'm pretty sure everyone mostly sees it differently too.
>
>What's the difference between a govt's clerk and a HMO clerk? At least in the former case you know his bosses are appointed by the party of your choice, and that he's paid more than a minimal wage, and he's not so disgruntled and therefore error-prone.
>
>So instead of having one bureaucracy, the choice is to have several: the internal paperwork of the "performer of medical labors" (as would have been said in my country 20 years ago), the paperwork of the HMO, plus the paperwork of the insurance companies where they both pay liability insurance (malpractice etc).
>
>My general feeling about the state-of-the-art government operations in the US is that the quality is intentionally lower than it could be, which serves several agendas. One is to prove that government intervention is intrinsically bad, and to use that as evidence when proving that free market is a panacea. The other would probably be to divert the money for various programs into wrong direction (but profitable for diverters). And last, but not least, to water down any programs which could influence someone's profits. This introduces a state of mind, which I see here a lot, where the majority opinion is that nothing a state (or government) does will be done right. For those who haven't seen any other state (or government) in action, this may sound like a truth.
>
>Speaking of medical market - somehow I can't see a sick person as one who will have the time, clarity of mind and will to shop around and read tons of legalese to decide where to buy health. Anyway, one doesn't shop then, one should rather shop in advance. But then nobody knows what one is buying - until the moment of truth. Just like another old profession, these insurance guys like to be paid in advance.
>
>Coming here, I thought I would be afraid of random shooting or being mugged. I'm not - haven't seen anything of the kind. But I'm scared spitless of two things: medicine and litigation.