Available - Accessible - Affordable.... We already have this plan

[SoCalDem]

There is plenty of medical care "available". There are doctors & hospitals all over the place..Medicine is everywhere too..

It's "accessible" too.. I see bus stops in front of every clinic & hospital. They all have parking lots..and there are even wheelchairs at the ready, by every entrance. Ambulances are also there. The elevators even have braille instructions.

People must be "affording" these places, because the chairs in the waiting rooms are always full, and there's rarely a "good" parking place.

The Triple-A aspect of our health care system is the fluffy frosting on a very stale and crumbly cake.

These things that politicians continually drone on and on about, are NOT the important issue. The important part is the part about WHO DECIDES what accessibility, affordability and availability are.

A celebrity or wealthy person can get ANY medical care, anywhere, anytime. As long as their money holds out, they can "access" all the care they want or need.

A person lucky enough to have taken a job at a place with great health care options, can usually do just fine with what's "accessible/available" to them, and as long as they have that job, it may stay "affordable". The problem is that a merger/a buy-out/a closure/a cut-back/outsourcing, or any combination of circumstances can suddenly end the whole thing, and that employee can (and often does), find themselves priced-out of health care.

Life is a pre-existing condition. A kid who breaks a bone as a child, in a fall from a bike, will have multitudes of xrays in their "file"..so will the child who plays sports in high school..ANY omission is grounds for cancellation of most policies, and every omission piles up the "possibilities" of being denied..

Applications these days use weasel-words like "have you EVER".. A 25 year old may not even KNOW what tests/procedures/illnesses he had as a child, yet if he fails to list them all, and it's brought to light later, his policy could be canceled..

The politicians..ALL of them.. are looking for a way to do this on the cheap, and they DO plan on keeping insurance companies in the mix.

A plan that allows the "flexibility" they seem to be pushing, WILL NOT WORK. Insurance companies make their money by NOT paying out claims, while collecting premiums.

What they are planning here, is a stop-gap plan to cover the next 10-15 years. After that time span, ALL of the "Greatest Generation" will be gone, and a large segment of the Boomers will have checked out. Boomers, as a group will probably have had the worst "oldster-care", and will succumb more rapidly.

Once the demographics level out, perhaps a more equitable plan will come along. The ones I see being floated this time around, probably won;lt help all that much.

[geckosfeet]

1. When all are covered, we will inject another 100-150 million people into

the health care system. Do you think that we have enough doctors, nurses, equipment and buildings to accommodate them?

Remember - these are people without health care. Some of them are probably in great need.

[justinaforjustice]

2. We Can Borrow Doctors From Cuba, If We'd Stop Sanctions Against Them.

The United Nations has praised Cuba for having one of the best health care systems in the world. Cuba sent thousands of medical personnel to Venezuela, where I am now living, to man the neighborhood medical, dental and eye clinics that the Chavez administration set up. Millions of Venezuelans who never had access to medical care before now have quality health care provided by the government.

If a tiny country like Cuba, operating under horrendous economic sanctions from the U.S., can provide health care to all its people -- and even send and train medical personnel for other countries -- why can't the United States? The answer is that health care in the U.S. is only for the rich who can afford exorbitant private health insurance premiums. We must make health care a right -- as it is in all other industrialized countries. In Venezuela, the Chavez government's 2000 constitution made health care for all a constitutional right. In the U.S., there seems only to be a constitutional right to private corporate profits, and that fact is wrecking our economy and the lives of millions of Americans.

[SoCalDem]

3. We can start subsidizing the education of NEW doctors

Their numbers are kept artificially LOW.. There was an article posted here at DU a while back that showed results of a study that analyzed this..