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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (552536)	3/1/2010 5:30:46 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573433

No one is suggesting that people shouldn't have insurance. But insurance is ultimately meant to spread the risk of catastrophic events, not to simply prepay your health care. Your homeowners insurance covers you if your house burns down. It doesn't pay to mow your lawn or paint the fence. Unfortunately, rather than getting consumers more engaged in their health care decisions, Congress appears ready to move in the other direction. The president actually denounced high-deductible insurance and greater consumer cost sharing as "not real insurance." Both the House and Senate versions of health reform reduce co-payments and all but eliminate policies with high-deductibles. No co-payments at all are allowed for a wide variety of broadly-defined "preventive" services. The consumer share of health spending will actually decline to just ten cents of every dollar by 2019. First, I disagree on the premise....that if you have a low deductible, you will go to the doctor more often. It really depends on the person. For an example, I hate going to the doctor....I go only when its absolutely necessary. The deductible has nothing to do with it. And I know a lot of people just like me. Secondly, the reason our lifespan is so much shorter than many other countries is because many people in this country don't have any insurance at al and can't afford to see an MD even on an as needed basis. We're not talking someone like you or I. We're talking about the roughly 30 million who have never had health insurance in this country. Finally, everything I have read on the subject suggests that the reform Obama is pushing will allow people to have the kind of policy they want.....low or high deductible. More importantly, it will also insure that everyone can afford a policy. It doesn't mean that everyone will have a low deductible and will be running to the doctor's office every other day. Even if that were possible, we don't have enough doctors to see that kind of load...meaning that appointments would have to be many months into the future. It will just mean that health care will be available to the entire population and not just to those who currently can afford it.