Tell Congress and Obama to Protect Insurance Companies NOW!

and some people don't WANT healthcare; I'm sure they'd much rather worry about the well being of their nearest & dearest. Bend over, America - you should be used to it by now.

Tell Congress and Obama to Protect Insurance Companies NOW
I'LL LET GREG MANKEW OF HARVARD ANSWER....

By N. GREGORY MANKIW
Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the
one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar
Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you
will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The
catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000.
Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live
forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely,
thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out
$150,000 a year for immortality.
Most Americans, however, would not be so lucky. Because the
price of these new pills well exceeds average income, it would be
impossible to provide them for everyone, even if all the
economy’s resources were devoted to producing Dorian Gray
tablets.
So here is the hard question: How should we, as a society,
decide who gets the benefits of this medical breakthrough? Are we
going to be health care egalitarians and try to prohibit Bill
Gates from using his wealth to outlive Joe Sixpack? Or are we
going to learn to live (and die) with vast differences in health
outcomes? Is there a middle way?
These questions may seem the stuff of science fiction, but
they are not so distant from those lurking in the background of
today’s health care debate. Despite all the talk about waste and
abuse in our health system (which no doubt exists to some
degree), the main driver of increasing health care costs is
advances in medical technology. The medical profession is always
figuring out new ways to prolong and enhance life, and that is a
good thing, but those new technologies do not come cheap. For
each new treatment, we have to figure out if it is worth the
price, and who is going to get it.
The push for universal coverage is based on the appealing
premise that everyone should have access to the best health care
possible whenever they need it. That soft-hearted aspiration,
however, runs into the hardheaded reality that state-of-the-art
health care is increasingly expensive. At some point, someone in
the system has to say there are some things we will not pay for.
The big question is, who? The government? Insurance companies? Or
consumers themselves? And should the answer necessarily be the
same for everyone?
Inequality in economic resources is a natural but not
altogether attractive feature of a free society. As health care
becomes an ever larger share of the economy, we will have no
choice but to struggle with the questions of how far we should
allow such inequality to extend and what restrictions on our
liberty we should endure in the name of fairness.
In the end of our day of philosophizing, however, we face a
practical decision:
Who gets the magic pills, and who pays for them?
N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He
was an adviser to President George W. Bush.

I guess the United States gets by far the longest average lifespan, given that we spend so much more on fancy new medical technology.

Right?

"So here is the hard question: How should we, as a society,
decide who gets the benefits of this medical breakthrough?"

DEATH PANELS!

I support death panels, BUT only if I get to be on one.

i have my very own MRI machine in the spare bedroom upstate. paid for by my insurance company of course. we have MRI parties, and we charge the insurance company for any repairs or supplies. they're happy to pay, of course, because my health matters to them.

If we didn't decide based on money, it would be based on political connections. take your pick.

Check out Billionaires for Wealth Care!

http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/

Cracks me up when BILLIONARIES like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet act magnanimous. They have more money than g-d. What's a few thousand for them.