[ExI] simple solution to health care

[BillK]

On 6/25/09, Damien Broderick wrote:
>  Can't. Luckily I had been paying an extortionate amount for insurance in
> the three years previous, which just about equaled the extortionate hospital
> bills (or that portion the insurer grudgingly agreed to pay). I'm now
> eligible for Medicare, which of course I'd have had in Australia routinely
> and paid the 1.5% levy for it; here I shell out more than $5500 a year,
> roughly what I was already paying. Eventually I'll come under the umbrella
> of my wife's eligibility and it will be free. And of course all the tax I've
> paid in Australia for decades doesn't count here, despite alleged tax
> treaties. But hey, I decided to come here to live. Emlyn, a substantial 4
> bathroom 2 storey house in downtown San Antonio near us sold for $US155,000,
> and another $50K for repairs to make it very livable. In Melbourne or
> Adelaide you'd get an outdoor dunny or chook run for that, without the house
> to go with it.
>


They're even telling Congress now about the crap that the medical
insurance companies get up to.

<http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Health/story?id=7911195&page=1>
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/the_truth_about_the_insurance.html>

"[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can
satisfy their Wall Street investors," former Cigna senior executive
Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before
the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

"They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a
minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage,
and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if
the enrollee has never missed a premium payment," Potter said.
"…(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the
bottom line."

etc......

BillK

PS. The US is in the middle of a housing slump.
That 150,000 USD house probably cost 300,000 USD two years ago.