I have mentioned this a few times before on other threads, but I will repeat it here.
Insurance is a way of spreading the costs. You don't know if you are going to have a problem this year, or next year, but sooner or later you expect to have something go wrong. It is a way of averaging the costs, so you aren't hit with a large bill unexpectedly.
This works the same with home, fire, auto and health.
Actuarials compute the statistical chance of any problem occuring in a population, based on some truly horrible math. What percentage will have a car wreck, what percentage will have a heart attack, etc.
The difference is that home costs are relatively fixed, as are cars. Health care cost are not. When the first MRI machines came out, the number of request for them were HUGE, as they were much better... however, the cost was also huge. All new medical procedures and equipment comes at a cost. As the ability of hospitals and doctors to recover these costs go down, the number of new items will decrease. Add to that the requirements that are loaded into health care. Someone owns a drug treatment program and he gets drug coverage mandated by the states in every policy. He knows that he will get more in new revenue from the insurance companies than he had to pay in bribes. Same for mental and nervous conditions, etc.
Adding 30 million currently uninsured (probably more, as the number of people flooding across the border will skyrocket when offered free health care without proof of citizenship) will increase the cost to each and every subscriber. Forcing the coverage of new procedures will further strain the budgets.
Finally, the only solution is what has been done for thousands of years. Those who can afford will have what they need, and the rest will get whatever amount is left, divided however many ways there are.
If you are one of 100 million subscribers, or one if 200 million, the amount of care available is finite. If private insurance companies run the game, then the divisions will be based on ability to pay, with different levels of care. If the gobt runs the game, (assuming waste is < 4%), there will only be one level of crappy serivice. A medical provider with the compassion of the IRS. Either way, people will have limited choices, limited drugs, increased suffering and increased deaths. [if gobt waste is > 4%, the gobt takeover will actually increase the suffering and deaths]
