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Responsiveness is mainly for emergencies - 911 calls and emergency rooms.

That doesn't account for non-emergency healthcare or access to it.

Only people that work for the government are supposed to get "top" healthcare? And that is not elitism??

Ask Cheney how much he pays in health insurance premiums.

YOU are paying for that emergency room care where people go when they have no money to pay for medical care. You pay for it in higher insurance premiums and higher costs for doctors visits and hospital visits and medical tests.

Insurance premiums - for those that have healthcare insurance - have risen around 83% in the last 7 years.

There is ALREADY a "faceless bureaucracy" - it is the healthcare insurance industry.

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There IS a price list that says how much a specific procedure should cost. Just ask any HMO - they have it all worked out: How much a doctor visit should cost, how much a test should cost, whether or not they PAY for a test, how much a hospital visit costs, etc.

They also have a list of how long an insured client can miss work for just about every type of ailment or surgery or emergency. And if you try to get more 'time off' due to any complications from those ailments or surgeries, you almost always get turned down. The pencil-pushers at the insurance offices tell the doctors what they can and can't do, what they will and won't pay for, and whether or not an insured person can miss any work and how much.

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Social Security won't be there when you retire because the government - BOTH parties - won't keep their hands OUT of that fund! They keep "borrowing" from it to feed other government black holes of spending.

So the problem with Social Security is not that it doesn't work, it is that our politicians won't LET it work and leave ALONE all the money that goes into it to fund it.

Medicare is for senior citizens. My mother has had some serious health problems the last several months. If it were not for Medicare, for which she DOES pay premiums - and a supplemental insurance she also pays for - she would not have been able to get the care she needed because there is no way she could have afforded it.

I guess we should just let all of our senior citizens fend for themselves when it comes to health care? You will be old someday - think about it ...

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