The other Awards Obama will will this year...

[kandrathe]

They are required to suture you up if you're bleeding to death. They aren't required to give you any long term treatment, diagnostics (beyond what is necessary to identify what's immediately killing you), or treatment for chronic conditions. Once your organs aren't rotting, your heart is pumping, and you're not going to fall over dead, they can send you on your merry way until the next emergency.

Basically, that is correct. If you have a debilitating condition, eventually exhausting your savings and retirement funds, you will qualify for Medicaid, and then the government will take care of you. The place where people are uninsured is usually that boundary between employable and destitute. Much like a road runner cartoon, once you hit bottom, (*thud*) then the safety net comes out. Which actually is more of an indifferent nanny from hell.

This is a staggeringly inefficient way to provide health care. If you proposed it to either a doctor *or* an economist in the abstract, it would cause them to spit their morning coffee. It drives up costs, it provides very little benefit relative to effort, and it only barely covers the ethical and humanitarian issues with last-minute emergency care.

Right. It really is not a system, so much as it is that last stop gap between allowing people to die on the street.

So, if what concerns you so deeply are the costs to your dear Republic, then you need to do one of two things: stop treating emergencies at hospitals for free (highly unethical, but very cheap), or come up with a system that accomplishes the same goals for everyone at less cost. Conveniently, a wide range of such systems exist, and are in widespread use around the first world. Their costs and benefits are public knowledge.

The objective should not be to force everyone to have medical insurance. The objective should be to insure that everyone has the opportunity to be as healthy as they are capable and willing to be. People should take responsibility for their health and safety.

On a personal level, I'm looking at a plan right now that has a combination of high deductible ($5000), plus health care savings account. Money gets deducted each pay period and accumulates in the tax exempt HSA, and once you consume the deductible level in a calendar year, then the insurance plan kicks in. The funds in the HSA can still cover what the insurance does not. If you don't consume all the HSA, it just keeps growing (and portions can be invested) for that future time when you will need it.

Or, alternately, you can keep repeating the hopeful mantra "private costs less", and hope the data decide to invert themselves to suit your preferences.

No, the only way that governments who run socialized medicine control costs are by rationing care and regulating the medical establishment. I could bring down the overall amount spent on food by the same manner by rationing the type and number of calories that each person could consume in a day. You would be sustained, but have less and fewer choices.

We could use the same technique to solve wasteful energy consumption and homelessness as well, where the government builds and assigns people to energy efficient housing.

If you make me dictator in chief, I could solve all these problems with a command economy and the force of government behind me.