Have you talked to other doctors in regards to what they might do?
One of my doctors said she felt “powerless” and had no idea what to do. Again the liberals are projecting their ideas into a marketplace where they have no idea what the realities are. They talk of greedy doctors?? What about the greedy lawyers? MOST of the problems with escalating healthcare costs COULD BE SOLVED if lawsuits were not such a prominent cost driver of healthcare. Of course telling this to a bunch of lawyer/politicians is like telling them their children are stupid & ugly.

This is the first time I have read anywhere a Dr. suggesting this. I agree 100%, when I was unemployed for three months all I wanted was catastrophic health care coverage until I was able to find a better job. I had a hard time finding this plan. This is a great idea if you have the savings to make the deductable. Here is what I wanted for health insurance, I would take a $5000.00 deductable and a $75 a month premium to be covered against cancer, heart attack, car accident or any other ailment that required ICU and longterm hospital stay. If need be I would cover the costs of my appointments and basic health care management, and hope that my catastrophic insurance would not be required.

This is a much better option than any public health care plan.

Who can conceive of a situation in America where an individual can go to school for 4, 6, or 8 years and then start a business and then have Uncle Sammy come along and take it over?

Where do they get off thinking they can tell anyone how much they are allowed to charge their clients? This is insanity.

Proper grammar saves lives.

Let’s eat Grandma.
Let’s eat, Grandma.

---

Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

A friend who is a successful saleman and his attorney wife are already starting to wnd down thier ‘productivity’ to stay under obama’s punishment level. They are looking t ways to preserve weath instead of creating it.

Perhaps the Teleprompted One can explain how this will improve America.

Hopenchange – It’s not just for losers anymore.

I’m a medical student who, seeing the way health care is headed decided to take an extra year to also get an MBA. If we go to socalized healthcare I will likely work as a Doctor only for philanthropy sake and not for a living. Instead, I’ll be using my MBA to make more money with less hours on the business/administrative side of things. In short, medicine will become a public service hobby (possibly done on mission trips to foreign countries) and not my main job–for every med student like me, who is smart enough to realize you can’t pay back 200k in loans and 10 years of lost salary while going to school with less than 200k a year-America loses a health care provider, Decreasing supply as social health care increases demand!

Sooo…figure it out America! Less pay=less full time doctors=longer waits and more rationing!

The only way I can see this not being a problem is if training is cut from 10-15 years down to 4-6 including college, with school prices greatly reduced–of course America would never put up with LESS physician training, the trend is currently for residencies to increase in length!

I am sure everybody has some ideas about how our health insurance should (and will) be in a few years. I assume (for some reason), that we will have flat-tax in the long run. I’m optimistic here.

First of all, the health insurance, Like David123 said, should cover catastrophies and serious sufferings and then you could implement a sliding scale of costs to the rest.

Let’s say, you decide your policy to have 10000 deductible. A medical disaster would cost you 10000, might therefore leave you 10K in debt, but that’s it. Bad, but not a disaster. Routine visits would be covered by yourself unless you spend 10000, not very likely most of the time. Therefore, since you put so much into taking part of “the risk” insurance companies are more willing to offer you a better policy as well. Health Saving Accounts would be free and unrestricted with regards to healthcare, maybe even renaming it as a tax-free catch-all bank account instead. The challenges are twofold: Make sure it would function for people with chronicd isease and reward preventive self-care. Smoking, alcohol, Obesity are, often called “preventive” by many, including Obama. Well, then let people get more rewards for preventive care also. Second thing would be to keep a freely-floating health insurance industry that would profit out of this while keeping it reasonable and effective. If America can put the man on the moon, we can also design the financial frames of our healthcare in the best way too.

Secondly, like itrytobenice was saying, we can have situational and circumstancial happenstances in your life that will change the ways you cover yourselves. If you are willing to chance upon good health, it is your choice, just know how you can prevent illness also, or be ready for it. STILL, at worst situation it would be mostly covered. We would need the same safety net as today, but it would be much cheaper and more fair. Maybe there could be a financial bottom that was guaranted like FDIC, I don;t know, but that could be a possibility if you really don’t believe the private can do it.

Finally, Rush Limbaugh explained it to me on his radio station a few days back and I was fascinated with how well he understood this. Electronic Medical Records is just a minute part of the whole problem, just like non-residents are just a small fraction of the challenge. Conceptually this would work and would alse be an amazingly easy way for the healthcare system to asess itself by how it would respond. Good preventive care could make tremedous differences if let to do it by it’s own without government telling what to do. If conservatives just talk about their option being nothing but improvement of the same they cannot win this debate. They need to talk about HSA, how they work and what would need to change. I’m not even sure the trial-lawyers are that big of a cause. Certainly (again) a bigger part of the problem, but not THE problem.

This can be done and is so easy to imagine possible in dynamic (still) America that I think it will happen, soon..

They are not engaged as consumers and watchdogs. They are playing with OPM-other peoples money.

An elderly guy would hit you on the head w/ his cane if you overcharged him a nickel for a hammer at your hardware store. That same guy brags to his friends at breakfast about his recent $20,000 hip replacement without batting an eyelash.

Not that he didn’t need a hip replacement or that was according to the plan he paid for but the point is he is left out of the equation on any cost containment on anything, especially the preventative/routine care (oil changes).

I am hearing about cash practice coop programs where a group of people timeshare a doc for flat or monthly fees, bypassing the inefficient billing system we have now.

That’s what you are talking about. The old Marcus Welby model of a physician. They work very well with HSA, especially, since their fees typically can come out of HSA’s until now..
And less constrained to practice cookbook medicine as you really only work for the patient. The better you know the patient from before if something happens, the faster you will get well as he/she tends to know more at an earlier time. We are trly talking about preventive care here, along with the day-to-day medicine, but currently harldy possible anywhere.