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We have a saying in the oil patch: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Unsurprisingly, there are very few liberals in the industry.

While some aspects of the US Healthcare system could have used a little tune-up, I don't think it was broken.

I'm self-employed, a great-grandfather too young to qualify for medicare and too "rich" to qualify for public assistance--IOW, I pay my bills, but carry catastrophic health insurance to take care of anything really big. Thankfully, I'm fairly healthy and not generally accident prone. While I cannot say I have always been satisfied with individual physicians, I'm still here.

Health care is very inefficient with our dollars: almost 40% of the trillions we spend each year provides no care at all. It is consumed by the health care bureaucracy. Despite draconian cuts in reimbursements just passed by Congress, Medicare -- the program touted by Nancy Pelosi to be the model for our whole country -- will go broke by 2017.

In addition to its financial woes, health care has personnel issues. There are not enough doctors and nurses for our current health care needs. What will happen when (if) ObamaCare adds 30-45 million more people to the rolls of the insured?

To get rid of administrative overhead:

1) Make the health care insurance market more competitive by allowing purchase across state lines. Competition should help squeeze out waste.

2) Remove the tax breaks for health care. Tax breaks on mortgage payments and health insurance have made home and health over-sized portions of our economy. Young people saving for their first home overpay for the home because of increased demand for that home due to tax breaks, and have overpowered health care plans pushed at them with government backing.

3) A friend in the medical industry made a good point to me: with 1/2 the population insured to the hilt it makes sense for the industry to develop treatment programs that cost hundreds of thousands or even a million dollars. Amounts that only the very few can afford. If there was not this over-insurance, the companies would develop more affordable treatments that they could actually sell. Cars are not built like super-safe luxury tanks. Who could afford them? Obama's program goes in the opposite direction: everyone must insure. Costs will go through the roof or it will be rationed. Standard treatment policies at a lower cost could be written to stop the risk of a 700,000 cost for one illness in the family; rationing made in a cost/benefit decision by the family itself. The policy makers would have to look at what regulations or dynamics is stopping this market innovation. HMO's have not succeeded since they are doctor based restrictions, not treatment based restrictions, on this one.

4) Charity. A kid, a young mother, a young dad, get caught flatfooted and under-insured. With a properly sized government, private charity should step in. There is a hospital that treats children for free for everything they are not insured for, St. Jude. Ronald McDonald houses put up parents for free when they have children in need of extended housing needs. With a less intrusive government, charities would step up to the plate and we would give to them.

5) Preventative care, routine operations, and testing are the most common needs people have. They should be able to insure for those alone instead of the extreme need situations.

6) If you save $200,000, you may have your retirement, college fund, etc., plans wiped out by an illness if you are not insured to the hilt, but you've got the savings. Government forcing us to put our savings in different buckets through tax laws (and then charging a penalty or simply not allowing us to spend when we need it (IRA, pre-paid college, Social Security etc.) are travesties.

I'm blithering, and not an expert, so I'll stop with my ideas. But I'm saying there are free market solutions.

While the U.S. is first in per capita health care spending, we are either 33rd or 46th (depending on the source) in terms of infant mortality. Though this fact is often used to attack the U.S. health care system, it is unclear how much is due to epidemiologic issues such as illicit drugs or genetics and how much can be squarely laid at the health care system's doorstep.

Because we treat and try to save premies that other countries don't even register as live births, let alone try to save? I find it disgusting when a supposed conservative fully subscribes to a liberal talking point without evidence of having knowledge of the subject (did yu know salsa is the most popular condiment in the U.S.?)

Just compare the practice of human medicine to veterinary medicine and the case for personal responsibility is clear.

Vets charge almost as much (or more) for shots and routine check ups. They get paid in cash and are not required to file pet insurance claims.

Pet owners don’t expect anyone else to pay for their pets’ medical care. They pay for what is needed to keep them healthy.

It’s a billion dollar industry!!!!

When and why did we begin to approach our own medical needs with a totally different mindset?

Some of us pay for more expensive insurance on our automobiles than our own bodies (which cannot be traded in)!

Forty-five million American residents (13% of our population) have no health insurance

•In 2007, 33.2 percent of all immigrants (legal and illegal) did not have health insurance compared to 12.7 percent of native-born Americans. (Table 1)

•Immigrants account for 27.1 percent of all those without health insurance. Immigrants are 12.5 percent of the nation’s total population. (Figure 1)

•There are 14.5 million immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) who lack health insurance. They account for 31.9 percent of the entire uninsured population. Immigrants and their children are 16.8 percent of the nation’s total population. (Figure 1)

•In 2007, 47.6 percent of immigrants and their U.S.-born children were either uninsured or on Medicaid compared to 25 percent of natives and their children. (Figure 2)

Whereas there are thoughtful elements of this article, overall the author doesn't get it right. First, anything devised by human beings, like our health care system, is imperfect and can always be made better. By that measure we can certainly make health care better and more cost efficient. Beyond that basic premise things get much more complicated.

Let's start with the most overused and misunderstood issue, infant mortality. It is a slap in the face to those obstetricians, neonatologists, highly trained nurses, and technical staff to not recognize that the US has the most advanced capacity to save sick and premature infants of any in the world. If you, as a parent, were to have a premature child, there is no where in the world you'd be better off at than in the US.

Infant mortality is the number of live-born infants that die within the first year of life. In the US two-thirds of these unfortunate deaths occur within the first month after birth, and are primarily due to health problems of the infant or pregnancy, such as birth defects or premature birth. In many other countries these infants would never be counted as an infant mortality statistic because they wouldn't survive long enough to be consider a ‘live birth’ in those countries. Babies that we try to save are considered non-live births statistically in many countries.

Further, WHO statistics are skewed and it would be foolish to hang your hat on WHO generated statistics as a true measure of health care quality. They are a UN-like organization with an agenda.

Finally, with regards to this single issue (infant mortality), the incidence of premature and underweight births is a problem that reflects societal issues, not medical care. Teen pregnancy, drug use, alcohol, etc. are big contributors to the incidence of prematurity and underweight births. These are fundamental issues that the government has helped to create, not failures of medical care.

There's so much more to be said, but I'm already using too much bandwidth. Sorry.