re: #8 lostlakehiker

If we decide as a nation that everyone is entitled to health care whether or not they feel like paying for it, let alone whether or not they can pay for it, then no one will feel like buying insurance.

Congratulations. You just came up with the perfect argument for a single payer system :P

re: #16 MKelly

Many pre existing conditions are covered after a 6 month or year waiting period. When I lost my company insurance and had to purchase my own all I had to do was indicate what conditions were present now and wait 6 months and then coverage would take effect.

Waiting period? And for a whole six months?! But, but, but…I thought only eeevil government-run systems had those!

Seriously, though, again this proves my point - unregulated private health insurance is the biggest death panel of all, “insuring” nothing more than out-of-luck middle class people getting screwed out of their life savings (or even life itself). What do you think would have had happened if you’d had a catastrophic health problem before that six-month waiting period was up?

re: #29 drboobooday

Of course, Mr. Huckabee, you must conveniently forget those of us who were diagnosed with a chronic, life-long condition as children, and cannot buy health insurance AT ANY PRICE.

He’d probably tell you to pray or hold a bake sale 9_9

A former co-worker of mine had a younger sister in a somewhat similar position - a chronic, lifelong lung disorder that required a transplant before she could have anything approaching full quality of life. Last year, she finally got the call she’d been waiting for, i.e. that a donor pair of lungs was available. 14 hours later (it only took that long because they had to make sure the lungs could safely fit in her chest cavity), she’d had the transplant.

What was her “co-pay” for this major surgery? How much did it cost her and her parents out-of-pocket?

$0.00

And if my tax dollars helped cover it, so much the better - I’d much rather they be spent that way than on abstinence-only sex education or overpriced contracts for steaming-pile-of-crap, soldier-killing companies like Blackwater/KBR.