US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Mavfin]

In contrast, I'd fear that if our doctors were government employees, we'd be treated as we are at the department of motor vehicles.

In this part of the world I had a different experience. Years ago Motor Vehicles was free enterprise. A private company leased its services to the state. The experience then was much as you describe.

At some point Motor Vehicles was nationalized, or statified, or whatever. The personnel became state employees with opportunity for advancement. A few weeks ago I was in and out quickly, served by pleasant people, and paid by VISA.

In my state, the License Bureaus, at least in the larger cities, and in many cases the smaller places, too, are political plums given out by the Executive Branch; i.e. the governor.

The most recent governor instead of passing them out as before, put them up for bid anyplace that there was more entities interested than needed to serve the people there. Service is MUCH improved over what it once was at most of them. Private entities taking care of the public stuff can work, they get a percentage, but, they're motivated to serve, because if they don't do well, they won't get an opportunity next time.

My personal comment on the US healthcare system:

Here's where I see the problem; I had a TIA (mini-stroke) one night, my leg basically refused to work for a few minutes, then I was fine. Two minutes after I fell, I could walk under my own power.

MRI and an 18 hour hospital stay, among other tests, was originally billed at 17.9K. Insurance company wrote off ~16K. So, the insurance paid about 1.5K and I paid the other 400. My issue is if they didn't have to have that other 16K+ if they were dealing with my insurance, why did they bill it at all? I mean, they accepted just over 10% of the total bill as paid in full.

Can someone educate me on that? I've never gotten a straight answer on it. To me, *that* is a big part of the problem. Where is this seeming 9x multiplier coming from? I've seen similar write-offs on every major bill (Four births, my heart issues in 2004, wife's knee surgery, etc) I've seen in the last 18 years, since the birth of my oldest.

Then we need to give doctors incentives to be doctors, treating patients, not revenue streams. And diagnosing things, not just pushing pills.