Mend Your Diet

Health care and insurance in United States?

I don't quite understand the whole deal. Why is there both health care and private health insurance? Americans pay taxes for health care, but what does health care do? What is the purpose of Health insurance if they have health care? I'm confused. I'm young and genuinely curious about this. Is it because the taxes aren't high enough to support full health care, and health care only pays for a part of things?

Public Comments

1. Put down the bottle. It will become clearer in the morning.
2. the money that we pay in taxes largly attributes to our higher costs. think about it. these insurance companies are taking in this money, but they are some of the biggest payers of this tax so to compensate, they have to raise their prices to continue to make a profit. if we were to get rid of this tax, prices would drop, but not by quite as much as the government has stopped paying them. these government plans only cover the poor, so the middle class (who does not qualify for these programs) has to compensate for the higher costs out of their own pocketbooks. the only three ways the problem can be solved is: 1. to cut the government spending which will lower prices, but the poor would then not recieve free care. 2. we could also raise the caps to cover everybody (clinton) which would effectivly make the costs shared by everybody and the prices would drop to their effective cost with just a minor profit. the problem here is that we eliminate almost all competition which is the only way to obtain medical advancement (and convince doctors to pay for 8 years of med school plus residency). 3. we could completely eliminate this aid which would force the prices down to their real levels while stopping the poor from recieving any aid. this means that poor people would have to pay for their own health care, but there are laws that exist that require hospitals to give operations to people who need them to save their life. if a poor person can not pay they will have to declare bankruptcy. that may sound bad, but right now the bankruptcy is happening on a LARGE scale within the middle class because they do not recieve aid AND have to pay for the higher prices caused by the largescale government aid.
3. I am old and need more health care than you and the young will pay for me. I am hooping that the young care about my health. Tax will not be much for me because I earn less now that I am old. I need your help the cost is breaking me. Corporations are not getting paid for me and will pass the cost on to you and they will inflate to make a profit. We have a few economic issues and health care is not going broke, they are making a profit and it is out of control the people that are going to pay the most are the old and poor...Nobody that is young can really relate to the reports you are sick and will die without care.
4. Health care is just that--private insurance is to make health care affordable not an "alternative" to health care. We have private health care and some governmentally run health care. The government has Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, IHS (Indian Health Services), and the VA (Veterans Administration). The problems with health care in the US are the government meddles in it--there is no federal authority in the Constitution for programs such as Social Security which spawned Medicare--both programs are going bankrupt. There is also the fact that there are only a few large insurers who dominate the market and call the shots. They routinely refuse legitimate claims and they violate antitrust laws. Because of those problems, if you're not insured you will be charged three times what the insured are. (If you're an illegal alien and use the ER you'll just skip out on your bill so the taxpayer must pay, but for regular folks, they'll be billed and hounded--even into bankruptcy.) If you are insured and are very ill, your company may not pay the claims they legally SHOULD be required to pay and they'll get away with it. Then you can go bankrupt after having followed the rules, paid your premiums, and jumped through their hoops. Read this whole article--but not on a full stomach: When 75% of the people who declare bankruptcy over medical bills ARE INSURED, then insurance is CLEARLY not the answer. "Aldrich’s situation is "asinine" but increasingly common, said Dr. Deborah Thorne of Ohio University. Thorne, co-author of a widely quoted 2005 study that found medical bills contributed to nearly half of the 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, said that ratio has likely worsened since the data was gathered. ... Like Aldrich, Thorne said, three-quarters of the individuals in the study who declared bankruptcy because of health problems were insured. " http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20201807/ The solution is the free market--less government, correct the big insurers violations, and post prices so the efficient providers are rewarded with business. http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/0217er17.html A doctor owned and run hospital that sees everyone gets care, no matter what happens to the bottom line. http://www.simplecare.com/ a doctor-driven group where reasonable rates are charged. Note you can go to a walk-in clinic at Wal-Mart or CVS or the like in many cities and get many of the most typical reasons for seeing a doc addressed for under $100. The price of LASIK has DROPPED dramatically over a decade. Plastic surgery is CHEAP. Compare a major procedure like a tummy tuck with the bill an uninsured patient will get for a medically necessary appendectomy WITHOUT complications.
5. As far as i know,this is a question with many different answers,it is really depend on the judgement of yourself,provide a great resource here for reference though.http://healthinsurance.onlineidea.info/cheap-child-health-insurance.html
6. In the US, you have a system that makes profit out of healthcare, and will attempt to make more profits, when for what ever reason, it does not have to provide healthcare. The purpose of insurance is to make money.
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