This is as true of government and of so-called “non-profit” groups as of private business, btw. Show me a government or a “non-profit” group that spends more than it takes in, and I’ll show you an organization headed for disaster, though it might take awhile to get there.

it’s IMMORAL and UNPATRIOTIC for insurance companies to profit

Spoken like a true nutty, bullsh*tting leftist. I call bullsh*t.

What’s immoral and unpatriotic is for the government to try to extend its takeover of health care, preventing free markets – that is, PEOPLE – from meeting human needs effectively.

Well, that’s correct, V the K, but it only paints half the picture. You left out the fact that to the soft-headed, anti-capitalist crowd, it’s the fault of right-wing, religious, homophobic capitalists and their bigotry and hatred that the gay dude engaged in self-destructive behavior and contracted the pre-existing condition in the first place.

Here’s an example. Say some irresponsible barebacking gay dude with no insurance finds out he’s HIV positive, and decides he wants to make others responsible for paying for the treatment of his condition. So, he goes out to buy insurance. A normal person would say, this is like buying car insurance the day after you get rear-ended. (Pun-intended). But to the soft-headed anti-capitalist crowd, it’s the fault of the greedy insurance companies for rejecting his pre-existing condition.

Sonic. I’m sure you’ll be able to provide multiple examples of ‘denying coverage to the sick’. I’ll wait.

Since food and shelter are also necessities, should grocery stores and landlords also be forced to give up profits from their sick, infirmed, aged or lower income customers?!

I like the idea of reducing the role of health insurance altogether by paying doctors directly for regular services and saving insurance for emergencies with provisions/protection for people with chronic illnesses. Lower income people should at least pay a minimum amount for their services based on a sliding scale above a certain base income level. I also like VtheK’s idea to offer incentives to Docs for servicing low income clients.

It’s everyone elses fault! Never me and my stupid marxist plan!

People seem to be ignorant of some factors in medical costs. One important reason for cost inflation is that many more injuries and maladies can be treated. In the good old days, a diagnosis of cancer (or AIDS) meant that you needed to get your affairs in order PDQ. Since patients didn’t live very long, the cost of treatment was lower.

Ditto for trauma. It used to be that severely injured people (e.g. burn victims) didn’t survive; the only cost was burial. Now many are successfully treated and resume a mostly normal life with friends and family. I think that’s worth the cost.

Some trauma costs are due to social issues like inner city crime. A couple of gang bangers injured in a shootout can easily costs a couple-hundred thousand to treat. A teenage girl giving birth prematurely will run up an enormous bill in the NICU. Given that the government’s reimbursement for these expenses won’t cover the actual costs, they get added to other peoples’ bills.

Michelle Malkin mentioned the other day an illegal immigrant who had two liver transplants at UCLA (and he was bitching about some reimbursement issue). I looked it up: the cost of a liver transplant runs between $100,000 and $400,000 depending on the complexity of the case. The MONTHLY cost of medications to manage tissue rejection run between $700 and $1000 (and I think those are for life).

And didn’t I read that octomom ran up a million-dollar tab?

The biggest problem, however, with government-run medical care isn’t that it would cost far most than estimates (like every other government program) nor is the problem that politics would enter the rationing equation… it’s that the fundamental relationship between citizens and government would change. We’d no longer be free-born citizens who have a consensual government; we’d all be clients of the state.

Doctors (and nurses and physicians assistants) would be allowed to form medical cooperatives… sort of like private practices, with a few incentives to get them to care for those who can’t afford insurance.

1. 20% of their care must go toward providing basic services to those who can’t afford insurance (who would be issued Federal Medical cards confirming program eligibility). The cost of routine office visits, check-ups, pre-natal care, tests, and so forth is fully deductible from their business taxes. The Federal government starts a program to pay for more involved treatments.

2. In return for keeping at least 20% of their practice focused on the needy, they receive immunity from malpractice suits, except in cases of gross negligence. Suits involving allegations of gross negligence must be cleared by a panel of independent doctors.

This is in addition to my previous idea where the Federal Government creates a public insurance plan to care for certain high-expense, catastrophic health events like cancer and organ transplants.

http://www.scottspiegel.com/?p=728
(“Everybody Gets Health Insurance! Everybody Gets Health Insurance!”)