what do you want the politicians' platforms on healthcare to be?

Answer 1

Federal funding for STATE run healthcare plans such as the U Care in MN, where anyone making 19K or less can get a health plan. With federal funding that plan could expand that ot all who make 30K and less.

Answer 2

To develop a healthcare policy that does not address the fundamental building blocks of healthcare economics is both penny wise and pound foolish.

Healthcare costs are escalating at a rate far in excess of inflation. Part of the reason for this is runaway malpractice awards and the subsequent cost of malpractice insurance. But there are also many other areas of healthcare far removed from malpractice where the expenses have been truly out of control for a long time.

The president and the Congress need to realize that we have a healthcare emergency. More and more people are being priced out of appropriate healthcare altogether, and senior ciitzens who saved carefully for a well-deserved retirement are now being bankrupted by out-of-control healthcare costs.

The president and the Congress need to levy wage and price controls on healthcare, including both direct and indirect expenses. I realize this is one step away from socialized medicine, but what alternative is there? We have a growing, roaring monster that threatens to eat all of us alive. Action, not talk, is needed and needed now.

Levy wage and price controls. Appoint a healthcare czar and give his department full authority for eliminating waste and duplication within the healthcare industry, as well as full authority to establish healthcare industry wage and price controls (regionally adjusted) throughout the nation. These wage and price controls would encompass the entire realm of healthcare, all the way from doctor's visits to medical insurance policies, and everything in between. Encourage and reward competition within the healthcare industry, and modify regulations to make such competition not only easier to create but also easier to encourage and nuture. Encourage the competition potential directly by urging insurers and the insured to shop around for quality healthcare at the best possible price.

Radical? What alternative do we have? All of the other suggestions I have heard address the problem in a piecemeal fashion, which won't work. Until the entire scope of healthcare economics is controlled, this monster will continue to roll all over us.

Healthcare economics are very complicated. It is a monster with many, many heads. But let me relate to you one tiny little example:

I can go into a dollar store and purchase a box of 10 oversized bandages for $1.50. I can go into a premium supermarket and purchase the same bandages, reboxed under a nation brand name, for about $3. I can go into a hospital emergency room and find the same bandages. When used in the emergency room, they are billed to a patient (or rather, to a patient's insurance) at the rate of approximately $7 each! From 15 cents each at the dollar store to $7 each in the emergency room --- for what is basically the same bandage.

This is but one very small example. There are thousands more, and each of these examples add up and add up, until you are looking at a healthcare industry that is completely overrun with out-of-control expenses. It's long past time for action.

Answer 3

Basically every other industrialized country has general coverage. For the US not to have it is kind of like living in the stone age. When I was in Taiwan and Japan, it surprised me that people actually go to the doctor when they get sick. Here in the US, we just kind of stagger through a cold and don't see doctors for preventative care at all, because it's so expensive. A national plan would be so easy it's dishonorable not to have one.

Answer 4

Leave me alone I will fund my own plan. The USA needs to stay ahead of the rest of the World, that is why we don't need it.....government burden and cost.

Answer 5

A national health care system where we overcome the Pharamacuetical influence and be able to negotiate our prescription drug prices.

Being the only industrialized nation without healthcare is killing our industries ability to compete.

Answer 6

To let me choose my own health plan and stay the hell out of my way.

Answer 7

Focus on malpractice suits.

Answer 8

Democrats - Everyone gets it free and you'll pay for it.
Republicans, get a job and pay for it yourself.

Answer 9

give every person the same as they have

Answer 10

HANDS OFF!