Can all of the elected officials stop spending money on the tax payers backs and the next 4 generations. It really isn't monopoly money!

When evaluating the high costs of health care in the US, there are a two undeniable truths that must be considered:

1. We have the best health care delivery system and services in the world, bar none

2. When the government runs a program, the service is worse and the cost is higher than if a private firm performed the same functions. THERE IS NO EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE.

When you examine the contributing factors to what drives the cost of health care up, the government is right in the middle of most of them.

Government Medicare and Medicaid programs pay providers an arbitrary rate (determined by them) that is far below the market value, causing cost shifting to non-government citizens' care resulting in higher costs to insurers and plans.

HIPAA regulations introduced by the government – Clinton administration – added an unbelievable cost burden to everyone in the system from doctors to insurers to service providers. Of course, this had to be passed on to consumers.

Government mandates in coverages at both the state and federal level drive costs up with the same result.

Government programs like WHEFA Bonding in Wisconsin give providers and hospitals low cost loans to proliferate their facilities, often without adequate demand. This results in higher prices for the services in order to justify the expense.

Generally, politicians have only one concern – preserving their political future – so all of the government entitlement programs exist because individual citizens with an "entitlement mentality" and "no skin in the game" complain to them.

Frivolous lawsuits against doctors and huge settlements from entitlement-minded jurors have driven malpractice insurance costs out of sight and, guess what…driving up the cost of services.

It's not the insurance companies! The solution begins with individuals taking responsibility for their own care. Consumer-driven health care in the private market is the solution. However, in order for this to be effective, information is the key. Be accountable!

If you're interested, visit the blog I just started at http://americanhealthcarereporter.blogspot.com. I'll link to this blog, as well.

I have private insurance and I want to keep it that way. I am a Great Depression Baby from the Greatest Generation as well as a military war veteran and I assure the current narcissist, entitlement-addicted generation that they will regret the day they allow the politicians control our medical and health care.

As an aside, has anyone told the trial lawyers that they cannot sue for Medical Malpractice under Socialized Medicine? That should get the ire up to the Obama/Hillary Administration they so espoused.

1- In every encounter with the government regarding the care of patients under their plans I have been told that since they pay the bills they will determine he my role and compensation – The principle is: He who pays the Piper calls the tune.

2_ To date since the successfull implemetation of socialized medical care for the social class of persons over age 65 has been the determinant factor causing the massive increase of medical care cost in both private and government care

3- The physicians no longer have a direct physician-patient contract for care. Either the government or the insuror is the contractor and supplier of patients to the professional component.

4- The communication system that maintains the professional status of physicians has been destroyed. Medical staffs are no longer independent, self-governing organizations of licensed professionals that oontrol and have the responsibility for the quality of patient care in the hospital. That concept if medical staffs has been subrogated to the position of an administrative MD who represents the powerless medical staff at the executive committee level and derives the power of office from the board of directors, not the physicians.

5- Recall Dr.Harry Beecher, Dean of Harvard Medical School. who in a 1959 JAMA article clearly stated that the morally repugnant behavior of the German admiminstration could not have occurred had not the medical profession subjugated itself to the will of the socialist political domination. Remember that NAZI party was the National Socialist Party, a left wing, not right wing political movement.

6- As the Medical Director of the Stanford ICU 1968 to 1971 I had the privelege of introducing a scientifically valid testing for brain death of the heart donors for the first cardiac transplants at that hospital. Under proposed socialization of our healthcare life and death decisions will be made in Washington, a great distance from the front lines of medical care that are essential to your life when that time comes in the life of each of us. Government officials whose primary concern is the cost of the class, patients, rather than the welfare and healthcare of the individual patient to whom their regulations apply. Your assigned physician will no longer be an advocate fou your good health, but rather and agent of the government assigned the responsibility to save money for the government. Washington has already threatened that hospital acquired infections and DVT are a class of diagnoses that represent physician failures and will not be reimbursed. Where the government agents derived this power to practice the validity of their 'class diagnoses' is beyond any moral or professional medical power and is the road to the cheapest form of therapy, namely death to the patient.