I highly recommend watching Frontline's "Sick around the world" and "Sick around America."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/view/
It's also on Netflix if you have that.

MA's healthcare is kind of a failure because they didn't do ENOUGH! Guaranteed issue insurance simply doesn't work unless there is also a lot of other regulation to go with it. You need to both mandate that all citizens participate (spreading the burden of cost evenly) and heavily regulate the unnecessary profits the health industry can make, especially though reduced administrative costs and collective pharmaceutical bargaining.

So what's really interesting about Obama's drive for health care reform is that I believe it's primarily driven by economics. Our country is going to go bankrupt funding Medicare in this health environment within my lifetime.

Unfortunately, collective pharmaceutical bargaining has already been thrown out the window by Obama, in an attempt to just get everyone to get together and start talking about it. My prediction is that his plan will be SO COMPROMISED in the end that it won't meet the cost reduction target, and it will fail because it "costs too much." This is exactly what the insurance companies want, because their profits are the first thing to go if he succeeds.

And the 9 trillion? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/business/economy/26deficit.html

Last edited by rhaikh; 09/01/09 08:48 AM.
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