Originally Posted by Robbie

Whether or not it "saves" more money in the long run remains to be seen.

In the meantime...going to the doctor is not one penny cheaper. Nor is going to the hospital. Prescription drugs are higher cost than ever.

Not sure where you can see that health care costs overall are cheaper when not ONE thing has been done to stop the price gouging by hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Until the actual CAUSE is addressed...we aren't doing anything at all but making sure that everybody (which doesn't really mean everybody) buys health insurance.

All the people who live paycheck to paycheck OR are unemployed OR are homeless and/or bums will still NOT buy insurance or pay the new "fine" (tax) when they don't. And they will still use the medical facilities...

And YES, people going to emergency rooms and other people who can't pay their medical bills were the bullshit excuse that hospitals used to very suddenly raise all their prices through the roof starting in the 1980's.

I guess people never did any of that prior to the late 1980's and it was just a sudden occurrence.

I was born in the day...but not yesterday.

And I KNOW from personal experience how it works. Had a hospital bill in 2002 that was outrageous (from a car accident). Had no health insurance. Hospital let me pay $500 a month on it while I was recovering. About 6 months in, they had a meeting with me and disclosed that the "real" cost of my hospital stay was a small fraction of what they were charging. I made the payoff for a few grand.

The whole scam was to hold hands with the insurance companies and charge exorbitant prices that nobody can pay.

It's all about money.

And nobody is ever going to stop that. Just too much money involved for any politician (including Baby Jesus Obama) to actually fix it.