All those who need medical care can get it now even if they don't have medical insurance. For routine care and testing, there are free and sliding scale clinics available from the US Health Service, most teaching hospitals and a variety of non profits in virtually every city and every rural area, and for treatment of more serious illnesses, anyone can qualify for Medicaid once they spend down their income and assets. The whole focus of the House bill and the Kennedy-Dodd bill is to shift the cost of care for uninsured people from them to other taxpayers, not to provide health care that is already available.
True, but you aren't addressing the problems that we have in our healthcare system. Pre existing conditions, the fact that we pay more and get less. Most bankruptsies are due to healthcare costs, poor people go to emergency rooms and get free healthcare at our expense, etc.
For profits should not be in charge of healthcare. Its not a good fit. They will keep raising their prices to max profits. They don't care about the sick. The sick cut into their profits. Blablabla.
Again, health care is available to everyone now even if you don't have health insurance and under the present plan, it costs taxpayers trillions of dollars less than it would under the Dem plans. The Dem plans are good news for uninsured people who get sick and have to spend down their incomes and assets to qualify for Medicaid and bad news for everyone else.
Private insurance companies may or may not care about sick people but with very few exceptions they do live up to the terms of their policies. Virtually every new piece of equipment and every new technology available to your doctor has been paid for with insurance money because the insurance companies are bound by their policies to cover efficacious new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.
If you are uninsured for any reason, you can get fairly comprehensive routine medical and dental care, even for mild to moderate chronic condition like diabetes, at a variety of free clinics located throughout the US. For example, if you go to a US Health Service clinic, you will be seen by a physician, provided with basic diagnostic tests such as blood work and x-rays and in most cases given prescribed medications and small medical devices all for free or for a sliding scale fee depending on the financial information you provide. The problem with this system is that if you develop a more serious illness that requires tests and treatments beyond the scope of the clinic, you might have to spend down your assets and income to the point of poverty before you would qualify for Medicaid.
Again, medical care is already available to the uninsured, and the Dem bills only really address the issue of whether the uninsured pays for it or other taxpayers do. If we decide other taxpayers should pay for it, doesn't the government owe it to those other taxpayers to provide this financial relief to the uninsured in the least expensive way that is likely to produce good health outcomes? The federal government can do this by starting a public service program that encourages uninsured people to get their routine care from already existing free clinics, providing tax incentives for people who increase their charitable giving to help fund these clinics and by providing sliding scale subsidies to uninsured who honestly cannot afford to buy their own insurance for any reason to buy catastrophic health insurance that will only kick in when their needs go beyond what can be provided at the free clinics. This would provide universal health care without requiring anyone to go broke to get it at a cost hundreds of billions of dollars less for taxpayers than the Obama-Dem bills will.
