“We are a solidly middle-class family of three. I am self-employed and cannot afford medical insurance. Mrs Chan works for our family business, which has no employee health insurance (too expensive).
...We do not live extravagantly. We own a solid, red-brick 1952 rambler of 1300 ft2 that we are renovating little by little, which is located in a old center-city neighborhood. I have a BMW (a 1984 318i, 200,000 miles±) and she drives our Toyota (a 1995 4Runner, 195,000± miles), both paid for, with full-coverage insurance ...We have no dogs, no Tivo, no boat, and no plasma TV. We live frugally.
And we still can’t afford health insurance.
Something’s wrong. I’m not saying that Hillary is right, and I’m not claiming that the Frost family deserves government-sponsored health care — but when a hardworking, frugal middle-class family such as we cannot find affordable health insurance, something is wrong.”
You are right BC. Doing everything you can, and not being super human... I think there are a number of things wrong
and certainly none of us wants gvmnt to step in.
We need to either eliminate health insurance and pay Docs the old fashioned way (with chickens and whiskey) , or create buyers pools/co-ops where people can associate for the sole reason of buying health insurance *ick* .
Also the pricing structure and tranparency MUST be easily available to patients.
How many here ask Doc how much a visit/exam/procedure costs?
Why would we when the Insurance pays for it ??
If Docs (sorry Docs ) had to compete for patients and not for insurance providers maybe things would become. reasonable ????
Perhaps we need to eliminate the framing of the debate;
Insurance -vs- Government payer...
Make a different frame entirely.
Haven’t a clue what to frame it but we must fundamentally change the debate.