Reply #8: Sorry For Your Loss... [View All]

I've seen this issue from two sides. Just like your father, I walked the final miles with both of my parents. My mother suffered from Altzheimers for the last 5 years of her life, and while it didn't require the intensive care your father did, until we found out what was afflicting her, she went into several hospitals with the bills going into 6 figures...and then in her final year, when we could no longer take care of her deteriorating situation, she was in a nursing care center. Fortunately, she had supplemental insurance (to cover what medicare didn't). While I had to pay the lion's share for her nursing care (since I chose the best home I could) at least she had two ways to cover her illness...options. It's what every American should have.

The other side I've seen was helping with my father's medical practice...dealing with the billing and with the insurance companies. I am highly critical of the current system as we encountered many times where the companies were "playing god"...telling us that the diagnoisis was wrong or procedures and medications weren't needed or were the wrong one without ever seeing the patient, just checking their tables and "procuedures". The fear of malpractice has made many doctors turn to the HMOs and PPOs...it's a system that desperate needs reform. Let the doctors do the medicine, not the insurance companies....and one major component on this would be tort reform. Set up a better way to adjudicate malpractice...have a board that can quickly throw out superfluous/cattle call suits but allow those that were due to incompetence to go quickly to a trial or arbitration...cut down the legal costs that the insuracne companies claim is why their premiums are so high. I won't even go into big pharma and the games they've played...but this deals with those insured.

There's the big matter of the uninsured and I strongly favor a single-payer option for ALL. If a person wants to opt out and buy their own, they should have the right. Or, if a person isn't satisfied with the government offering, to have an affordable supplemental program...again, as an option. Bottom line is that no one should be turned away from medical attention due to costs and to create a better system that encourages prevention and based on medicine, not profits.

To those who wish for the insurance companies to go away...not gonna happen. They do and can have an important place in a reformed system, but in conjunction with a government program, not in place of one or as the only option.