Greed

Don't know why your link doesn't work..

Try this.

This is very interesting. I am always shocked when i read how you have to deal with these huge personal financial losses and debts due to your kind of healthcare systems.
But i guess i can not say too much about this without breaking the "no politics" rule ... other than - i am pretty thankful that i live in a country, where the pure healthcare cost does not bring *anybody* in an existence-threatening trouble really, and everyone does not only have the possibility to have a good healthcare insurance, but nowadays has to be insured by law - without exceptions.
Of course we also struggle with negative impacts on our healthcare systems, due to different reasons, and we see systems that work even better for the individual than ours, but our problems are nowhere near to beeing comparable to what can happen to people in the U.S. if they got seriously ill or have accidents.
It really is frightening for me to think about, what would be, if i had to pay my meds privately. The cost would be nearly what i have for my life maintenance sans apartment rent. OK, since some of them had become subject to be marketed as generica in the meantime, it is not so much anymore.
And i need these permanently. And besides the fact that nowhere in the world meds are as expensive, as in my country, i can get what i really need for a maximum fee of 10 Euros per med packet in a prescription.
I feel with everybody who has to deal not only with health problems but additionally with the resulting personal healthcare cost and financial problems. IMHO it is bad enough to be seriously ill, and nobody deserves to be punished with threatening financial situations additionally!
OK, rant over. If i get an "infraction" for breaking the rule, be it so. I felt the need to write this...

Greed is the oil that greases the capitalist machine. I don't necessarily say this as a criticism. We work because we want stuff.  However, the human condition being what it is, greed itself will never be put in check, so for capitalism to thrive a fair and just (regulated) environment is necessary. The problem for hospitals is there's this weird conflict between the demands of the hippocratic oath, which is one of the foundational values of the profession, and the free market system within it must survive.  Hospitals are forced to work within a system of rules and regulations pieced together over time by politicians, having been carved out by the demands of traditions, unions, pharma, and probably three other things I can't think of or don't know about. The result is a patchwork of options and a minefield of restrictions.  Given these demands it should come as no surprised that hospitals are all but forced to be "creative" with their pricing structures, and transparency with the public does them no service.

I'm too lazy to dig out my micro-economics textbook from college, but it's pretty clear to me that everyone expects and deserves affordable health care just like they expect and have the right to fire and police protections, putting them in a similar class economically speaking. To deny these services at a reasonable cost to anyone is to deny the very foundation on which the values of the Constitution rests, that all men (sic) are created equal.  I don't know that this can ever happen as long as hospitals are forced to thrive in a free-market environment.  Socialized medicine has it's set of issues, many of them borne of inefficiencies, but from an ethical standpoint it has the higher ground. The best solution may very well lie between the two, and that's always going to be messy, which pretty much brings us to where we are now.  There. I'm done with my rambling rant.

randge, just curious if you read the article?

Its sobbering, to say the least. The lady who said she wouldn't remarry because she doesnt want to burden a future spouse with the $144,000 debt from her previous husband's cancer treatment (and death) is a sad reality of medical care costs in america when you get really sick.

that's capitalism for ya

Actually, our hospitals in Germany have been privatized in the meantime. But still, they are financed thru the healthcare insurances, and most of them are statutory health insurances. So, it is not too far away from owning them, like it was before. The insurances are the ones which decide how much they are willing to pay for the healthcare services, not the other way round...
But the changes that took place when making hospitals private business led to strange and sometimes ridiculous changes, like QM measures, where QM is absolutely counter-productive ...
Actually this is, what i referred to as "negative impacts" in my previous post. These are widely critizised by the healthcare personnel and the patients (sooner or later everyone, i guess...). But it could be much worse, and you are right, giving healthcare completely out of the hands of the government is a strange and frightening thought for most europeans. Because we made good experiences with it. And as of taxes and insurance fees (also statutory pension insurance and care insurance) ... i was in the highest tax and insurance payment class with actually 60% all in all, not more. If your income is below a certain value, taxes and insurance fees are lowered, so it does not hit you hard.  Half of the healthcare insurance here is paid by the employer, which is considered a fair deal.
It is not high taxes and fees that make people dissatisfied with a system. Denmark and other countries (esp. Skandinavia) with the highest taxes in the world consider themself the happiest people in the world, as of reliable surveys. Even those with the highest tax load on their shoulders are happy to live in a society of solidarity and without huge income gaps or real poverty. Something that i know is not imaginable in other parts of the world. But it's reality ...
And be ensured - these are not "socialist" countries in any way ....

? A "penalty" if u don't qualify for a subsidy? it's NOT a "penalty", u just DONT QUALIFY, and have to pay what the PRIVATE insurance company's charge u. The ACA is a regulation, not an insurance co who sets rates, y'all act like insurance companies were giving u a free ride before it happened, and that's total BS, they sucked then, and they suck a tiny bit less for most now, that's the problem with this stuff, no one checks the facts.
BTW, married people with children have it made, they get all kinds of tax breaks, single people get a "penalty" for being single..., or put another way, they don't qualify for the subsidies.

Comments??  Thoughts? 

And that is why I want it considerably smaller and individual states to have the appropriations authority.

So be it. It will separate the places people want to live from places that don't take care of their people. It can be monitored so much better by the individual states.

You know when States have the same autonomy as countries they will exhibit the same problems as states and then the counties will blame the state for issues and the states will blame the counties and complain that the Fed Government never helps them.

There's poorly managed beurocracy, which the Federal system certainly has, and then there's everyone passing the buck on each other. You need a national health system, education system, banking system etc. and it needs to be standardized.

Prior to the collapse this is what the EU was working towards. When I was 16 I was sent to France by my country for 2 weeks and we didn't have to worry about healthcare, I was automatically entitled to national French healthcare as if I was French. Pay the tax, get the service. The issue outstanding for us is the service varies wildly, with Ireland's being really shitty, but it's a system that allows for easy free movement of taxpaying citizens without arbitrary concerns.