Suzanne, have you personally been a patient in a government hospital? Have you personally received out-patient care from a government facility?  I both have been a patient and a provider.  When pregnant with my first child I ended up with pre-eclampsia.  I was told by the base mid-wife that I was dehydrated.  Fortunately, I was active duty for another branch of the Uniformed Services and relayed the situation to my medical director.  She pulled some strings and I was able to get appropriate care off-base.  If I had delivered on the base, there was no likelihood of an epidural or other basic, EXPECTED antepartem care.  I also ended up in a similar situation with my 2nd pregnancy.  Our facility had a pharmacy budget of $600,000 for a patient population of 20,000.  We were unable to provide much more than very basic care.  If the patient had Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance, we were able to obtain more intensive care for them. As far as medical bills go, I just got out of the hospital from a near fatal illness.  I, too, am struggling to figure out how I’m going to pay my portion of those bills.  It is still better than being dead, however, as my illness took 5 docs, several tests, 2 ER visits and a hospital stay to figure out.  I am a clinical pharmacist and I KNOW that I would be dead now if we had been under a government run program. I have worked in the system and been a patient in the system.  I know EXACTLY how it will work.  Trust me, you do not want this.

My husband worked for the USDA for 33 years and yes we had, for the most part, great health care.  It is not Govt. insurance however.  Because the govt. is large they can negotiate better deals for their employees, just like large companies, large school districts, states for their employees, but they negotiate with several companies usually.  We had choices between PPO’s, HMO’s, and others.  Everytime we moved, and we did several times, we had to pick another plan that was covered in that state, but we were guaranteed insurance, pre-existing conditions or not!  That is the best part as we are both cancer survivors and are under 65, so still don’t qualify for medicare.  Now that we are retired, I pay a lot of attention to what we pay - our share - for health care.  It has increased since 2004 from $2100 to $4800 in 2008 - same insurance, higher co-pays, more for specialists and prescriptions!  It doesn’t matter if you are on the "govt. plan" or not, you will see increases that are way out of line.  I think that we have to agree that something has to be done and if we could rely on the insurance companies to police or regulate themselves and come up with someway to make the system smoother and better, then the govt. wouldn’t be getting involved.  The banks screwed up, so the govt. got involved - etc.  Do we like govt. regulations?  NO, but lets be realistic, those that have will take advantage of those who don’t have, that seems to be human nature - unfortunately. The next thing I hear is "who says we are entitled to health insuracne"?  Well, who says we are entitled to health care?  We all assume we are entitled to health care, and I feel we are, so if you clog up the system by going to the emergency room for all your illnesses, and you can’t pay, then you are causing the rest of us to pay more.  If everyone had some sort of insurance, then that would be a big savings to those of us who have had insurance all along.  I can’t imagine not having insurance - it scares me silly.  Let’s just pray congress can come up with something  - we need something!