THE GREAT HEALTH CARE DEBATE..

[sits in trees]

I'm not that surprised. I think that a lot of you guys assume that anyone who has any 'liberal' positions whatsoever must fit your image of 'a liberal'. I've said it before on other threads. I have what could be described as liberal views on some subjects and conservative views on others- it depends on the subject. I'm always leary of anyone who has party-line positions on every subject.

we have become a country of followers, Fox news watchin knuckle head so called conservatives who preach liberty and freedom in every other sentance or brain washed MSNBC liberals who believe that America was made great by their contributions to i really dont know what??? When will the America people wake the hell up and think for themselves? And im not talking forming opinions on what you heard from Hannity or Chris Matthews the night before, i mean really think for yourself.

[wooffer]

Sad but true and the situation is getting worse everyday.

[nyantler]

Let me give you an example of how a government program works... when my son was sick.. my "so called" 100% coverage health insurance decided that they were not going to pay about $25,000 in medical bills without my knowledge and I recieved a bill from the hospital months after the bills weren't paid. It was an itemized bill with the amount charged by each doctor and the "usual and customary" cost paid by my "100%" coverage insurance company... that didn't pay not one single bill in full.

well.. not having $25,000 on hand, I figured I'd go to the doctors (many that I never saw treat my son at all) and try to renegotiate their bill to bring the cost down to where I might be able to pay it. I was refused by all the doctors, but one. I considered filing for bankruptcy, but decided to go to NYS to see what the government had to offer for help in htese situations. After filling out loads of paperwork and tellijg them my situation... they decided to "take my case" and assigned me a case manager... this is a heavily funded program with our NYS tax dollars designed to help people out who are in need... I figured they would either force the insurance company to pay what they had failed to pay or pay the bill with all the tax dollars I've paid out in the last 30 years.. instead they went to the same doctors that I had already talked with and convinced them to reduce their fee to the medicaid rate... which by some coincidence was exactly the "usual and customary" cost that my insurance company paid. I ended up with a final bill of $86. NYS paid nothing but whatever they normally would have paid the case worker.

My point here is that none of this needed to happen... the insurance companies have no plan to pay 100% of anything... they would have paid less regardless of what was charged by the doctors... and if doctors are OK with the medicaid rate why not just charge that in the beginning... and why fund a program to have to go in and negotiate something that could have been done without their help if everyone just did the right thing in the beginning. I did what I was suppose to do... pay my premium and taxes for the last thirty something years. None of this will be fixed by the new healthcare bill.

Edited April 20, 2012 by nyantler

[sits in trees]

Let me give you an example of how a government program works... when my son was sick.. my "so called" 100% coverage health insurance decided that they were not going to pay about $25,000 in medical bills without my knowledge and I recieved a bill from the hospital months after the bills weren't paid. It was an itemized bill with the amount charged by each doctor and the "usual and customary" cost paid by my "100%" coverage insurance company... that didn't pay not one single bill in full.

well.. not having $25,000 on hand, I figured I'd go to the doctors (many that I never saw treat my son at all) and try to renegotiate their bill to bring the cost down to where I might be able to pay it. I was refused by all the doctors, but one. I considered filing for bankruptcy, but decided to go to NYS to see what the government had to offer for help in htese situations. After filling out loads of paperwork and tellijg them my situation... they decided to "take my case" and assigned me a case manager... this is a heavily funded program with our NYS tax dollars designed to help people out who are in need... I figured they would either force the insurance company to pay what they had failed to pay or pay the bill with all the tax dollars I've paid out in the last 30 years.. instead they went to the same doctors that I had already talked with and convinced them to reduce their fee to the medicaid rate... which by some coincidence was exactly the "usual and customary" cost that my insurance company paid. I ended up with a final bill of $86. NYS paid nothing but whatever they normally would have paid the case worker.

My point here is that none of this needed to happen... the insurance companies have no plan to pay 100% of anything... they would have paid less regardless of what was charged by the doctors... and if doctors are OK with the medicaid rate why not just charge that in the beginning... and why fund a program to have to go in and negotiate something that could have been done without their help if everyone just did the right thing in the beginning. I did what I was suppose to do... pay my premium and taxes for the last thirty something years. None of this will be fixed by the new healthcare bill.

Insurance companies are pirates without a doubt. But the new healthcare bill will prevent an insurance company from telling your son with a medical history, oooppps sorry no insurance for you with that nasty pre existing condition you have, or they wont be able to tell you well we think we paid enough for your sons medical needs and now your on your own fella.

Getting back to the mandate, i beleive it will bring rates down, or well keep them from going up at 20 to 35% every year like they have been doing for the last 2 decades. The more people you bring into the insurance pool the better chance you have of keeping costs down. We have mandated auto ins in NYS, if we didnt you would have millions of drivers in our heavily trafficed state that would choose just not to have insurance, trust me. And if that were the case you would not find an insurance company that would wanna take the risk of insuring you and if they did you would be paying 5 times what you are paying now for car insurance.

Hey i might well be wrong about all this but what the heck has anyone else done about it so far but ignore the whole situation...

[Grouse]

Auto insurance is mandated, but more people today are driving without it than ever before. Why? Because the price went way up when it was mandated. Take away the industry's need to offer a competitively priced product and you get higher rates. And don't forget, you now also pay etxra for "uninsured motorist" coverage. Why do you need uninsured motorist coverage if the law says it's mandatory every driver has it?

[nyantler]

Insurance companies are pirates without a doubt. But the new healthcare bill will prevent an insurance company from telling your son with a medical history, oooppps sorry no insurance for you with that nasty pre existing condition you have, or they wont be able to tell you well we think we paid enough for your sons medical needs and now your on your own fella.

Getting back to the mandate, i beleive it will bring rates down, or well keep them from going up at 20 to 35% every year like they have been doing for the last 2 decades. The more people you bring into the insurance pool the better chance you have of keeping costs down. We have mandated auto ins in NYS, if we didnt you would have millions of drivers in our heavily trafficed state that would choose just not to have insurance, trust me. And if that were the case you would not find an insurance company that would wanna take the risk of insuring you and if they did you would be paying 5 times what you are paying now for car insurance.

Hey i might well be wrong about all this but what the heck has anyone else done about it so far but ignore the whole situation...

I will agree that there are parts of the bill like "pre existing conditions" that make a lot of sense and allowing you to insure your kids until they're 26... but those could still have been done without a 2000 page healthcare bill... but as far as determining what, where and how much the government insurance will pay will not change. In fact if you read the bill the government can deny any procedure at any time based on whether or not THEY think it is necessary...medicines will be covered based on government decision of what medications are acceptable... that is no different than current insurances... and rather than paying only usual and customary costs they will tell doctors what they can charge for certain procedures... most of the bill simply gives government complete control over your healthcare while blowing smoke up your ass that you can make your own health decisions... it just is not so... allowing people to shop for health insurance anywhere they want is the only answer... creating real competition among insurance companies is the only answer to lower insurance costs... tort reform is the only answer to keep unnecessary procedures and high health care costs down. Our government was not designed to run anything without F---ing in up...

[Grouse]

Our government was not designed to inject itself into the free enterprise system at all. It was a mistake for people in the past to ask the government to get involved in the free market. It is a mistake to ask it to get more and more involved now. The reason US Healthcare is currently screwed up is because the government got involved in regulating healthcare in the first place.

[sits in trees]

Well something has to be done because if we let the current system go "as is" no one will be able to afford health insurance nevermind healthcare not even the teachers unions, hee, hee, and we will be that much closer to becoming a 3rd world nation...

But the part that bugs me is the republicons never did a thing about our countries health insurance situation in all these years and now these democrats come up with this new law and the republicons are all out screaming about ooohhh we have a better idea and we should do this or we should do that??

I think we all know that BIG insurance funds the GOP and the candidates that they know they will get them the biggest paybacks once elected. Just like the Dems are the unions baby and all the big unions dump millions upon millions of bucks into democrat canditates campaigns. Until the money is takin out of politics and special interests stop funding these crooks this country will continue to be drivin right off the edge of that cliff.

[Lever action]

I agree there is a lot of corruption in the government with special interest groups funding both parties, but I think the answer is to allow us to shop for health insurance like we do car insurance.That would help keep cost down through competition.Very big mistake to get the gov't involved.

[hunterman7956]

Some thoughts on the subject by a former ins co. exec...

Wendell Potter (Photo credit: Robin Holland)

Today, the Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments regarding the constitutionality of the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “Obamacare.” At issue: the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance if they’re not eligible for a public plan like Medicare or Medicaid. At stake: the promise of near-universal coverage, and, perhaps, the election.

We checked in with Wendell Potter — once head of communications for health insurance giant Cigna, now an outspoken critic of the industry — to get his thoughts on the case.

Lauren Feeney: What’s at stake when the Supreme Court looks at the constitutionality of the new health care law?

Wendell Potter: If the Supreme Court declares the entire act unconstitutional, or even just the provision that requires us all to buy insurance by 2014, we’ll be pretty much back to square one — with 50 million Americans uninsured.

Feeney: The entire act? I thought the case was specifically about the mandate requiring everyone to have insurance.

Potter: In their haste to get the law passed at the 11th hour, the Senate did not include a severability clause. So, theoretically, the Supreme Court could say if part of the bill is declared unconstitutional, all of it is declared unconstitutional.

In fact, that’s what the insurance industry is saying in the amicus brief they filed with the Court: that if the individual mandate is deemed to be a violation of the commerce clause, then the entire act should be struck down. Their rationale is that if you don’t require everyone to buy coverage, but you still outlaw some of the most egregious practices that the health insurance industry has been guilty of for many years, then their business model won’t be sustainable even in the short term.

Feeney: Didn’t the health insurance industry support the act?

Potter: The industry was supportive of the act because of the individual mandate. They don’t want to be told that they have to accept all people who apply for insurance, that they can no longer drop people from coverage when they become sick, or that they have to spend at least 80 percent of their premium dollars on care without at the same time having the requirement that all of us buy coverage. If you don’t have that provision, they’ll have to provide coverage to the sickest people but they healthiest may opt out, so their profits will begin to drop.

Their hope is that the law will be upheld, and that they can influence the elections — because their real objective is to keep the individual mandate intact but get their friends in Congress to weaken or strip out the consumer protections.

Feeney: What is the industry doing to influence Congress, the elections, even the courts?

Potter: They spent an enormous amount of money to influence the debate on health care reform, and goal number one for them was to make sure there was an individual mandate in the bill. The second goal was to make sure there was not a public option. They got both. They were not able to keep many of the consumer protections from winding up in the bill, but they got their two main objectives.

Of course now with Citizens United they’ll be able to spend a lot of money trying to influence elections, and they will do that by helping to finance a lot of issues campaigns through super PACs. Last year, the health care industry, through its trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, funnelled almost $86 million to the Chamber of Commerce to finance the Chamber’s advertising campaign to influence the health care reform debate. They have a lot of money, and they will deploy that money in different ways, some in ways that really can’t be traced.

And what they’re doing now is, they filed this brief with the Supreme Court and I think made it clear to the justices, particularly the conservative justices, that the individual mandate is necessary, and that originally it was a conservative idea. It came straight from the Heritage Foundation.

Feeney: What’s your prediction for the court’s decision?

Potter: I think the court will uphold the constitutionality of the law. Of course my opinion is worth no more than anybody else’s. There’s a lot of speculation.

I think the court will hold up the entire act; it will shift then to legislative battles. I do not think that if the Congress is controlled by Republicans — even if they win the White House — we’ll see Obamacare repealed. The insurance industry needs it and they’ll make it very clear to lawmakers once they’re elected: Keep your hands off my individual mandate.

Feeney: The RNC launched an anti-health care act campaign last week, pegged to the two-year anniversary of the law and the upcoming Supreme Court case. Can I read you a few of the talking points of the campaign and get your thoughts on them?

This is from an open memo from the RNC’s Political Director, Rick Wiley. It says “49 percent of voters say the health care law has, as of today ‘significantly increased the price of health insurance….’” with “only 2 percent (yes, two) of voters saying their health care costs are going down.” Is it true that the new law has raised costs?

Potter: No, and it’s very clever and disingenuous how they’re doing that. They’re citing public opinion, and I’ll give the opponents due credit — they’ve done a tremendous job of misleading Americans about this to get those kind of poll results.

No, The Affordable Care Act has not significantly increased premiums. You have to look at where premiums were going before the Affordable Care Act — they were going through the roof. The Affordable Care Act will ultimately slow the premium increases. What we are seeing now is that some insurers are trying to make as much money as they can now before the law fully kicks in in 2014. So there’s a lot of profiteering going on because of this long phase-in of the law, but studies show that only 1-2 percent of rate increases that have been implemented since the law passed can be attributed to the Affordable Care Act.

Feeney: The memo continues: “44 percent believe the new law has ‘caused many employers to drop health insurance coverage for their employees.’” Any truth to that?

Potter: No. The provisions of the law that pertain to employers haven’t really kicked in. I don’t think there have been many employers who have dropped coverage as a consequence of the law. I think there probably have been some employers who have dropped coverage because of the continuing cost increases from the insurance industry.

Feeney: These stats are about public opinion — why is it so low, and why are there so many misconceptions?

Potter: They come from a very well planned and executed campaign of misinformation. What is really going on is opponents of President Obama and Democrats in Congress have seen this as a great opportunity for them to try to turn people away from Democratic lawmakers. They’ve been demagoguing this issue, misleading people. And there has been no comparable campaign to explain the law and tell the truth about it.

Feeney: Last weekend my 2-year-old son fell at the playground and broke his leg. When we got to the emergency room, they asked for our insurance information before even looking at the screaming child’s leg or offering him any painkillers. It felt so absurd. I mean, when you go to a restaurant, you get to eat before you pay. Why is that the very first thing they ask when you walk in the door?

Potter: It’s because of the dysfunctional nature of our health care system. It wouldn’t happen if you were a Canadian citizen or if you lived in almost any other developed country in the world. But we’ve got a system in this country — and calling it a system is a stretch — that is controlled largely by big for-profit insurance companies, and the hospitals are very dependent on revenues, both from federal and state governments but also from insurance companies. Such a high percentage of the population is uninsured that hospitals have very high levels of uncompensated care, so they want to make sure they’re going to get some money. Though hospitals say they have collectively billions of dollars of uncompensated care — that’s not exactly accurate. Somebody has to pay for it, and as a result we have enormous cost-shifting — people who do have insurance are paying higher premiums to cover the costs of people who don’t have insurance and otherwise can’t pay for the care.

It’s just a ridiculous, absolutely absurd situation. We’ve got to change that.

Related Features

• How Will the Supreme Court Rule on the Health Care Law?
  

[wooffer]

This guy is just pushing a book and I find much of what he says to be inaccurate or cleverly worded. He says this statement is untrue,

RNC’s Political Director, Rick Wiley. It says “49 percent of voters say the health care law has, as of today ‘significantly increased the price of health insurance….’”

I agree that the health car law did not directly raise insurance premiums but the actions by Obama to start the whole process moving caused a rapid increase in all of our premiums. I have seen it first hand as an administator at one company I worked for.

[noodle one]

I can not for the life of me believe that this topic is still going on. Everybody has an answer , but no one has said how to fix it. Who's to blame? Not only this topic, but everything else that is going on in this country that is going to hell in a hand basket. Ask yourself who is to blame ? Is It the Dem's or the Gop"s. Guess what ? It's not them, It is us ,YES we the people. We are to blame because we are no longer the BOSS. We send politicans to Wash to work for us, Dem's and GOP"s alike and what do they do when they get there. They tell themselfs that they made it and now they do what they want or there party tells them to do. Some if not all of them sign pledges to their party or some special interest group that now become there BOSS no matter what we want or say, We are no longer there Boss because now all they want to do is stay were they are and they know were the money comes from to keep them there. Now they are our BOSS because they do as they please ,not what is good for the coutry and us. The good thing about it for them is when they do pass laws they can make themselfs exempt from it when they know it is a bad law, so what do they care. The politicans love to follow forums like this because they know that if we are fighting about this, we are not seeing the real problem and that is them. We need to become the Boss again. We need to vote them all out and let the new ones coming in know who the Boss is. We have to let them know that when they pass a law ,they can no longer be exempt from it any more than you and I. That is the only way that when a law is passed , they will make sure it is a good law for all the people and not just a few. We need to be together on this to work and we need all the people working for this. It is the only way it will work. I am all for Health Care because this country needs it, but not the way it is written now.. We are the richest country in the world and there is no need for any one to go without food or health care. We can get this done, all we need to do is see what the problem really is and it is the politicans themselfs.

[Doc]

Doc's post is interesting, but not really accurate. The growing trend in healthcare is 'preventative care'. The reason for this trend is because the truth is the exact opposite of what Doc implies. For the most part, people who don't take care of themselves do not suddenly drop dead without costing the system. In fact, smokers, diabetics, the obese- rack up massive healthcare expenses. Insurance plans and many employers are encouraging preventative medicine and 'employee health' programs- tobacco cessation, weight loss programs, exercise programs, etc.- specifically to foster a healthier and more productive workforce. They're doing this because it has proven to lower insurance premiums because healthier people cost the system less. This is not my opinion or theory. It is fact and you can easily find plenty of recent articles that explain it further.

Do you people really believe that health addicts are all destined to simply quietly pass away one night in their sleep and never experience catostophic illnesses in the process? I know it's unpleasant to face, but the odds are pretty good that as uncomfortable as this little tidbit is, eventually we will all have to face the fact that we will probably be costing quite a bit of cash before we exit this life, and that is regardless of our lifestyle. Death is one thing none of us will escape, and try as we might, we cannot dictate the terms and outcomes of that certainty. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but none of you will be able to dictate the condition of your demise. But I will guarantee that the longer you live, the more you will medically cost to keep around. Can anyone really argue the fact that the longer we live, the more health care we require. I frequently have occasion to visit a rather large nursing home, and I will tell you that we have the ability to keep a lot of people alive for many years (even decades) now, in fact a lot longer than most of them would prefer. Yes they need constant, super-expensive individual care for all those additional years and nursing homes are bursting at the seams with millions of them. And I suspect that a lot of them have long ago outlived their long-term health insurance policy benefits (if they ever had them to begin with) and are now being primarily subsidized by tax money. Or, at least somebody is paying for it all. So yes, the insurance companies are off the hook. But that doesn't mean that the expenses aren't there even if they no longer show up on some insurance company costs ledger. I think there is an elemental level of logic that says that the longer we hang around, the costs of medically keeping us gets geometrically larger. Those that croak in their 50's or early 60's because they made poor lifestyle choices are perhaps the ones that keep us from being buried in additional decades of healthcare. So for those that want to spout insurance company studies, there just might be a few vital details that they are leaving out about health costs after benefits run out. But I'll bet there are some in the pharmaceutical industry that could paint a different picture of old age maintenance (much to their delight), and show some dandy profit increases as life expectancies continue to lengthen.

[Doc]

I can not for the life of me believe that this topic is still going on. Everybody has an answer , but no one has said how to fix it. Who's to blame? Not only this topic, but everything else that is going on in this country that is going to hell in a hand basket. Ask yourself who is to blame ? Is It the Dem's or the Gop"s. Guess what ? It's not them, It is us ,YES we the people. We are to blame because we are no longer the BOSS......

Noodle-

If there was any one of us who could hand you a solution, we wouldn't be wasting our time here. The fact is that we didn't get here overnight. We've been at it for a couple of centuries now. We and those before us have constructed a huge, unmanageable, system that simply is running itself now without the constituents. We talk about getting it all back under control, but the fact seems to be that we don't even have the tools anymore to pull the system back under control. Worse than that, we don't even have the will to do it anymore. At the end of the day there has to be a realization that the mathmatical majority doesn't even want to change the directions that we have been moving. The majority is very happy with all the goodies that the government parcels back out to us. It's the new tyranny. We are being ruled by our own greed. And it truly is an irreversable direction. We've finally reached the point where the recipients out-number the producers. We have produced a new version of Communism that crushed the Soviet Union. We seem to think we can do it better. However, the simple truths of human nature pretty much guarantee that the same results will take place.

Man, I am certainly willing to listen to anyone's ideas on how to solve the world's problems, but I have yet to hear any ideas that are anywhere in the realm of reality. I don't believe in magic. And likely this all will not end well.

[nyantler]

Having a solution and actually getting anyone to implement it are two different things...

[bubba]

when all is said and done much more is said than done

[WNYBuckHunter]

Theres only a certain percentage the courts can garner from ones salary. How much do you think a hospital will get back on a 250 or 800 thousand dollar hospital/surgery etc bill from a guy who makes 60k a year with no insurance? And i think you missed one part of my post, Medical Bills are the leading reason people file for and do go into bankruptcy for in America, this is a fact plain and simple.

And yes i think cutting into someones right to not buy health insurance is a spectacular idea because it makes that someone responsible for their own health care, NOT ME!

Also i will come out and say this because none of you conservo's can be honest enough to say it, YEA i think illegals should be left to die in the street when they get sick OK, man women and even child goes to a hospital with a stroke, heart attack, chopped off arm and they have no insurance just turn their arse around and send them a packin....thats what your saying too right, lets get this perfectly clear instead of doing the dance around the bush routine.

what im getting at is you cant say stop providing free health care to illigals without saying, let em die in the street, its people who say we shouldnt provide free health care to the poor and illegals and then in the next breath say ohh we take care of everyone in America when they get sick so theres no need for any type of structured insurance system no one gets turned away from an emergancy room????

I dont say let them die in OUR streets, send their asses packing back to wherever they came from and let them die in THOSE streets. See, you have to get to the root of the issue to fix it, not just gussy it up with window dressing and say it looks good, so it must be fixed.

BTW, if you think you wont be funding people's healthcare more than you already are, you are kidding yourself. This plan is a step toward a single government payer system, and another step in the direction of the Govt wiping your ass for you. I guess you are ok with that though. Personally, Im not.

[Doc]

Ha-ha .... isn't it funny how we use the term "illegals" and then want to treat them like first class U.S. citizens. Either they are in the country illegally or they're not. If they are, deport them. Don't worry about them sponging off our medical system. They can't do that if they aren't here. And if they are here creating an illegal situation, take care of that situation and the problem goes away.

I've often wondered what naturalized citizens who have gone through the proper channels and activities think when they see others laughing at and ignoring our citizenship laws and having everyone fall all over themselves trying to make life easier for these crooks. They must wonder why they ever bothered to do things the right way. I have to wonder too.

But anyway, they are crooks who are flaunting our laws. They should not be rewarded with any kind of government assistance other than being forceably assisted back into the country that they came from.

[virgil]

WNY, how would you propose that we in the medical field tell the difference between 'them' and you? For example, if you were to be involved in an unfortunate accident and for whatever reason, you weren't carrying your identification or your wallet. If you were brought to a hospital emergency room, would you expect them to decline treatment until you could prove you were a citizen? Would you be left to die in OUR streets? Don't get me wrong, I agree that illegal immigration is a major contributor to the high cost of health care. But, not everything is as simple as you imply.

[nyantler]

WNY, how would you propose that we in the medical field tell the difference between 'them' and you? For example, if you were to be involved in an unfortunate accident and for whatever reason, you weren't carrying your identification or your wallet. If you were brought to a hospital emergency room, would you expect them to decline treatment until you could prove you were a citizen? Would you be left to die in OUR streets? Don't get me wrong, I agree that illegal immigration is a major contributor to the high cost of health care. But, not everything is as simple as you imply.

Emergency treatment as you described is not the problem... your scenario, although valid, carries little weight when arguing the total illegal immigrant health cost problem... I believe we all know that WNY was talking about the other 99.9% of "them". That kind of cherry picking semantics is exactly how liberal America keeps anything from getting done. Yeah.. lets use one half of one percent of a problem to hinder doing something about the the other 99.5% of the real problem.

Edited April 23, 2012 by nyantler

[WNYBuckHunter]

Joe hit the nail.

Of course you cant prevent 100 percent of the instances, but you sure can cut them down by the vast majority by taking the majority of illegals out of the equation to begin with.

[virgil]

Emergency treatment as you described is not the problem... your scenario, although valid, carries little weight when arguing the total illegal immigrant health cost problem... I believe we all know that WNY was talking about the other 99.9% of "them". That kind of cherry picking semantics is exactly how liberal America keeps anything from getting done. Yeah.. lets use one half of one percent of a problem to hinder doing something about the the other 99.5% of the real problem.

How do you think illegals gain access to medical care? In most cases, it's through emergency departments because they know that they cannot be denied care. You're barking up the wrong tree with this response and typically using broad stroke accusations in place of fact.

[nyantler]

I didn't say what you posted wasn't factual ... I said it is a very minute problem in the grand scheme of illegal alien healthcare costs... and it's just another spin that you are using to make a point that doesn't address the real issue... and it's typical of how liberals try to argue a point... by avoiding the real problem. You seem to suggest that when an illegal needs health care he goes out and gets himself into a nasty car accident so that he can see a doctor.. and we're suppose to believe that this is the cause of most healthcare costs for illegals... that's just nonsense and you know it.

[virgil]

It's not nonsense and it's not spin. You should do a little research into just how illegals cost the health care system. They don't have to be in a nasty accident to get treated in an ER. Many of them use ER's for primary care because they cant' be refused- they make up fake names/addresses and get the care they need. How else do you think they 'steal' care?- you can't make an appointment at any doctor's office without giving your insurance information first. So, where/how exactly do you think illegals are getting medical care if not in ER's. You seem to think that they are costing the system more elsewhere- where??? I agree that illegals are driving up the cost in general.

[nyantler]

Actually virgil I have to give you a break here... your point about having to treat illegals in certain situations.. would be correct... and it isn't as simple as just not treating them if they're already here and in dire need of care... nobody should be that insensitive to human life... and you have already stated that you think it is a huge part of our healthcare costs... but you are wrong to think that the government can do anything about it... they just are not the ones that will fix our healthcare system by making us buy insurance and making businesses have to offer it.

Edited April 24, 2012 by nyantler