It makes so much sense to implement a program like this. I am a senior citizen who prays for programs like this.The benefits will multiply exponentially throughout society.

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We need a Single Payer National Healthcare System, you are so correct if implemented it will provide jobs in every position in healthcare . It's a win win plan ! write to all elected officials and demand a single payer system. The present system is killing us literally and financecially.
Thanks

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I find it interesting that all talk about health care reform centers around universal coverage. For real health care reform we have to start with reforming the FDA.
We have to change the current medical paradigm from diagnosis and prescriptions to prevention. The money saved by adopting a health care system based on prevention would more than pay for coverage for all Americans.

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As a clinic owner who might see a [slight] pay cut if universal health care passes, I am all in favor of it as are the docs at the clinic.

I'm afraid that if it doesn't that we are looking to relocate our clinic, our medical staff and our families to .Canada

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As a clinic owner who might see a [slight] pay cut if universal health care passes, I am all in favor of it as are the docs at the clinic.

I'm afraid that if it doesn't that we are looking to relocate our clinic, our medical staff and our families to .Canada

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I don't think Amanda Marcotte has even begun to make her case.

I've been on this Earth long enough to have seen changes in health care, and they aren't good changes.

-- Doctors have had to hire more staff to sort out the endless hassles and roadblocks put in the way of payment by insurance companies. That's bloat.

-- Drug companies have thousands of workers who generate slanted science and aggressive advertising campaigns on behalf of drugs, most of which will eventually be removed from the market because they are dangerous or ineffective or both. That's bloat.

-- Hospitals routinely arrange cozy business deals on the side with doctors - special investment opportunities, for example, which are noncompetitive - so that those doctors will consent to affiliation. That's both corruption and bloat.

-- Charities, such as the American Cancer Society with its billion-dollar-plus surplus and large staff, serve as mouthpieces for industry. You will never hear a peep out of them about the billions of tons of industrial carcinogens and other toxins produced annually which are largely responsible for the rise in cancer and other diseases. Failing to address the direct causes of diseases causes health care bloat.

-- Ambulance-chasing lawyers have multiplied like rabbits in 19th Century Australia. Malpractice insurance can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for ONE DOCTOR. Juries don't know squat about medicine, but they figure doctors are rich and insured, while patients are poor and had a bad health outcome. It's unbalanced, and it's produced... you guessed it... bloat.

-- The FDA refuses to endorse the message that Americans should eat less, because the food industry doesn't want to hear those words. If the FDA ever got serious about health, jobs would be lost in both advertising and industrial food processing. Bloat, bloat, bloat.

-- In the 1990s, the long-offered promise of computer-generated productivity gains was finally fulfilled in visible economic terms. That is, it was fulfilled in virtually every industry, save one. In health care, the computer age hasn't had a payoff yet. Patients are portable, but their data isn't. Doctors still rely mostly on what's in their heads. Instead of real-time diagnostic equipment, what we mostly get is laboratories with slow turn-around. This *will* be fixed, eventually. I don't know if I'll live to see it, but when it is, lot of job bloat is going to be shrunk right out of the industry.

Corruption, waste, greed, dysfunction, lost opportunity. I could go on and on, but you get my point, surely? The health care industry is a *service* industry, and it's grown too large relative to the rest of the economy to be affordable. It's bloated. You cannot meaningfully reform health care or contain its costs unless you shrink it.

The very idea of pumping up the health care industry with more jobs makes me squirm in my seat. More jobs is not reform. More jobs would just make the whole thing even less affordable.

Reforming health insurance will eliminate jobs in both the insurance industry and in doctors' offices. Ending corruption, banning drug advertising, banning toxins, pushing for eating less (and better quality), leveling the legal playing field, cutting out bloat - these are the things we should be talking about.

If we are successful, there will be far fewer jobs in a health care system, but they will be providing higher quality care at lower cost to more people who need it less often.

Reducing the health care slice of the GNP will unburden the rest of the economy and help it to thrive (and make us all feel better, too). That is the only way forward that makes economic sense. I disagree with Ms. Marcotte; she has (again) missed the point.

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The 25 Highest Paid HMO Executives 1996 Annual Compensation
Exclusive of Unexercised Stock Options

Stephen Wiggins, CEO, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $29,061,599
Wilson Taylor, Chairman and CEO, CIGNA Corporation $11,568,410
David Snow, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,403,451
Robert Smoler, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,085,972
William Sullivan, President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $7,823,076
Joseph Sebastianelli, President, Aetna, Inc. $7,394,506
Michael Cardillo, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc. $7,069,969
Leonard Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $7,010,698
George Jochum, President and CEO, Mid-Atlantic Medical Services, Inc. $6,526,065
Ronald Compton, Chairman and CEO, Aetna, Inc. $5,813,287
Wayne Smith, Former President, Humana, Inc. $5,166,575
James Stewart, Executive Vice President, CIGNA Corporation $4,832,799
Richard Huber, Vice Chairman, Aetna, Inc. $4,801,841
Roger Taylor, Executive Vice President, PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. $4,103,864
Daniel Crowley, CEO and President, Foundation Health Corporation $3,849,023
Gerald Isom, President, Property and Casualty, CIGNA Corporation $3,778,293
Alan Hoops, President and CEO, PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. $3,221,602
Daniel Kearney, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc $3,189,272
D. Mark Weinberg, Exec. Vice President, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $3,009,944
Donald Levinson, Executive Vice President, CIGNA Corporation $2,985,017
Ronald Williams, Exec. Vice President, WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. $2,827,381
Allen Wise, Executive Vice President, United HealthCare Corporation $2,697,751
Jeffrey Elder, Senior Vice President, Foundation Health Corporation $2,235,783
H. Edward Hanway, President CIGNA HealthCare, CIGNA Corporation $2,217,711
Kirk Benson, President and COO, Foundation Health Corporation $2,104,414

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Only Disease Prevention along with Health Freedom will solve the U.S. health care crisis. We will absolutely save untold billions[that's billions with a "B"]dollars very shortly after it is implemented. Let the people decide how they treat their own bodies. Let them use alternate ways to "prevent" and treat disease as was done over a hundred years ago. There was very little sickness and disease then until vaccines arrived on the scene.

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