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"I recently dealt with a case where a young woman had no health insurance (but was honest enough not to attempt to defraud the system by using the emergency room under a false name). She caught pneumonia and didn't even know it. She thought she had a bad cold. She caught pneumonia and didn't even know it. She thought she had a bad cold. She took over the counter cold medicine, which did nothing but hide some of her symptoms and aggravate her condition. She's dead now. Her young children will be a burden on the state for the next 15 years."

It's not defrauding the system to use the emergency room. She had pneumonia. In case you don't know, pneumonia is painful and you know your going to die if you don't get the antibiotics. All it takes is the antibiotics to obtain a cure. The cost should be less than a $100, but it's not.

She can't pay cash to docs. That's not allowed. Docs that take medicare patients can't take cash, by fed rules. A simple case like this can be handled cheap, but no, too many rules, overhead procedures and costs.

All musclehead's scheme is going to do is take more money from folks that are already paying for this system in the first place and direct a significantly larger percentage of money to the healthcare jobs industry. Then after that they'll go nuts with health issue rules and justify them with "were paying for your bad whatever".

She had pneumonia. In case you don't know, pneumonia is painful and you know your going to die if you don't get the antibiotics.

You don't know the facts of this case. She never thought she had pneumonia, but ultimately it killed her by taxing her heart.

I brought up this case because it serves as a real life example of how our health care system is broken and how something needs to be done. To be frank, this lady could not have gotten insurance on her own and had to take a job with a large company in order to get it at all. She was required to wait at least 6 months before converage could start. She had some other conditions that essentially made her uninsurable and ultimately contributed to her death. I suspect that if she had health insurance or some reasonable alternative, then she would have sought treatment instead of trying to self treat with cold medications.

Right now I am paying not only for my own health insurance, but also for the non-payors, illegal aliens, deadbeats and cheats. And because of our ligitation mess, the costs of insurance for someone on the fringes is simply astronomical.

I'm not convinced that the governator's plan will work, it probably won't. But something needs to be done. People are dying out there for lack of coverage. We can fall back on our knee jerk conservatism, but the fact is that not having insurance and not having legitimate access to it can kill you or destroy your life.

Don't tell me that some single mother working at an entry level job can "afford" health insurance. If it were not provided by my employer (along with all the group discounts) I know for a fact that I would have a difficult time getting it on my own. Indeed, I suspect that I am probably uninsurable at this point in my life, so in the absense of a group policy, I'm outa luck.

With this plan, no one would be out of luck. everyone would be given the opportunity to have access to "affordable" health coverage.