OK it’s Poll Time

[KeithE]

Vote for one system you think will work best.

[Tim Bonney]

I chose single payer with private doctors and hospitals. I don't think that switching all the hospitals to public status is workable.

[Sandy]

No secret, I'm for the single payer with the public hospitals, unless the private hospitals were willing to operate on a non-profit basis. There are quite a few of those in operation now, most of the top rated hospital systems in the US are not for profit. They'd all have to agree to equal rates and charges for services, since the current system's monopolies allow for such variances that the same procedure can vary in price by thousands of dollars, depending on how cornered the market really is.

There's also not any reason why the government couldn't do the same thing with the premiums it collected for medical care as insurance companies have done. Investing it, and getting a high rate of return would make it go even further, and would very likely cause interest rates to rise, given the volume of cash they would be investing.

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Not only is the system broken, as Sandy says about, it is also unsustainable.

One of the things I got to do pastoring in multi-staff churches was negotiate insurance for the staff and myself. Now I'm on a denominational plan in the UMC. What I have seen happen to insurance costs, particularly in the last ten years, shows me that soon even middle class Americans will not be able to afford insurance and medical care.

What I have seen is that every year the cost goes up and yet what the policy covers goes down. I'm with the same big box insurance company I was with as an American Baptist now in a UMC plan. The UMC pays more for me to be insured than I once was able to negotiate to cover my entire family several years ago. And yet we have huge deductibles we never had to carry years ago so that we pay more for insurance than we have ever paid and yet are responsible for more and more of our own medical costs. It is a double whammy.

If something isn't done about the current system not many years down the road only the rich will have health insurance that covers anything in any meaningful way and they will be the only ones who can afford go to the doctor.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

I'm afraid Keith that while the tide is turning that the politicians in Washington are so beholden to the big insurance companies that things will have to get so bad that the American people are voting them out and threatening to tar and feather them before they will change anything.

I'm afraid we will be on the brink of disaster before congress will act.

[William Thornton]

[William Thornton]

The larger part of the insurance premiums I pay, Sandy, go to pay unhealty preachers medical bills. I can choose, however, not to buy the insurance and GuideStone will not come after me with guns.

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

And you can keep your bank; I'll stick with my credit union, thank you.

And I work for a grocer who is happy to have a fully unionized, fully insured workforce.

[Sandy]

Yeah, the government does do a pretty good job of national defense, as opposed to private contractors. It's also interesting that when most members of Congress are looking for quality health care during their stay in Washington, DC, they generally go to Walter Reed NMMC. Of course things are probably a lot different now than they were when I was a kid, but I never knew that you actually had to pay to go see a doctor, or be in the hospital, until I turned 21, and could no longer go to the closest military hospital. My Dad was in the navy and then worked for the defense department as an AC mechanic at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona and we had access to Raymond W. Bliss AHC. I had my tonsils out there. They had access to just about any kind of specialist you needed to see, and one of the things I remember about the clinic is that you didn't have to make an appointment, you just walked in. My Dad basically got his medical care there until he was 83, and moved to Tucson, and stopped driving. Even then, his government employee insurance cut through hospital bureaucracy and red tape like a hot knife through butter. And when he lived there, he went to the Arizona Medical Center/University Hospital, the public hospital at the University of Arizona Medical School, the state's #2 hospital (Scottsdale has a Mayo Clinic) rather than the private hospitals, which were not as good.

Generally, when shopping for groceries, I will choose a local chain that is union and provides health insurance. The largest one in the area usually has the best prices and the higher quality meats and fresh veggies and the owners, who are Jewish, not Christian, believe in helping people as much as possible, and a level of generosity in terms of giving away both money and product to people who really need the help. Since they support my school with a program that allows customers to swipe a card, and give 1% of their purchase prices in a donation to the school, I'd shop there even if they were more expensive than Walmart.

[Haruo]

Ah, but Sandy, our evidence is all anecdotal, whereas William's has the feel, the aroma, of scripture about it.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Ehow? Dang, I'm impressed.

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]