I think the biggest problem with the U.S. Healthcare system is the same as with our business and other systems; we pay our people a lot. Health insurance companies are mostly paper pushers and that costs a huge amount of money. Think of your doctor's offices and how many clerks they have versus nurses; mine has more. I have a $2600 deductible to keep my insurance costs lower. We visit the doctor every 3 months or, 4 times a year; if we paid, out of pocket, the $80 it costs to visit a doctor without insurance, that would be $320. I pay only a little less, each month than that in health insurance. The health insurance, like social security, should be insurance, not pay for one's needs. I think one should budget for day-to-day needs like medical, in the same way one does car, rent, food, etc. Health care is a fact of life and a "choice" not a right. I don't think kids in their 20s' who'd rather have fast cars or fancy apartments should be forced by a government to have insurance if they didn't want to make that choice; but I don't particularly want money I pay to the government going to pay for their health and/or retirement care in that case.

Money is a difficult subject to discuss and I think health care in the United States has a lot to do with money. We all know people who abuse the "system" and we all know ways in our heart of hearts where we've wasted our own money in the past or think we have or are glad of "free" money, etc. It's like the environmental issues we're facing. It's about choices. This country though is the best country to be in, in my opinion, because it allows choices. Communism and socialism don't work because they don't allow choices, they try to eliminate need and, ultimately struggle, and it is struggling, in all it's pain and triumph that I think is one of the most important human attributes. We only learn and grow through struggling with things, not with letting someone else (government) do away with that and say, "Oh don't you worry your pretty little head about that, we'll take care of it". Getting one's say and having "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as guides; everyone has different ideas about what that is and that makes it messy. I don't want to give up getting dirty and messiness, the mud wrestling of representative government/politics for someone else telling me what's good for me and telling me what doctor I can see and what that doctor is allowed to do for me! People forget that it's not JUST about money but there are people in there too and you dictate what doctors can do, how they practice medicine and you get a whole lot less variety and personal interest in there and that makes being a doctor less interesting to the more talented and you get mediocrity instead of good medicine. Kind of like what happens when Government gets too big :-)