I don't even want goddamn insurance

[anarch]

I just want reasonable access to health care. I have insurance now, and I still can't afford to pay for health care much of the time...the deductibles and co-pays are too high. I get part of my paycheck lopped off and sent to a private insurance company every week, and what I've gotten out of it is that I'm slightly less in debt to the hospital (thanks to an incident a year and a half ago) than I would have been without insurance.

OK, maybe more than slightly, but without it I suppose the bill would have been so outrageously high that I might not have even tried to pay it. Or else I'd be on the same slow-bleeding payment plan that I'm on now, which sometimes means cutting back on things like, oh, I don't know--food and stuff.

But I just don't understand...I pay and pay and pay, and then still have to pay some more whenever I need to see a doctor. Granted, I feel lucky to have any access to health care at all--I could live in a "third world" village somewhere and have to walk 20 miles to the nearest clinic, which would almost certainly not be able to provide the care I can get in the U.S. But this is not the "third world"...at least not yet. Why can't we have health care as a public service? I don't even give a rat's ass about the insurance part, as long as I can go see a doctor and not wind up penniless and in debt afterwards...or have to choose between medicine and food...which by the way can be a pretty agonizing decision.

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. We should adopt the UK's system

It wold be much better and easier than the abortion that's being touted now.

[Laelth]

8. +1 n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[laughingliberal]

2. or have to choose between medicine and food...which by the way can be a pretty agonizing decision.

yeah, we chose food. Too bad they couldn't have done something about drug costs...

[leftstreet]

3. We need Health CARE not Health INSURANCE

K&R

[pecwae]

4. Insurance = health care; not.

Some don't seem to see the difference between the two and the difference is substantial.

[tranche]

"see a doctor and not wind up penniless and in debt afterwards"

That's what we call. Insurance.

[Ron Green]

5. My story is very similar to yours, and I suspect there are MANY people

in essentially the same situation.

[kestrel91316]

6. Selling medical "insurance" ought to be a federal crime,

punishable by imprisonment without healthcare access.

[mullard12ax7]

7. K&R: You, me and most other Americans agree

There are a few corporate insurance hucksters and politicos that don't.

[juno jones]

9. K&R! n/t