In this rich & wealthy land of ours we rate internationally pretty low overall on the health care scale, infant mortality, life expectancy, acess to proper medical treatment, costs, etc are 37th though we are consided to be one the formost in technology & wealth, so something isn't right. Our system is not in need of repair it is broken & is in need of replacement. It's not hard to take a lookat some US state systems that work as well as looking to those nations that run better programs (there are at least 36 of them) & taking a look at what works for them & applying the better parts of their systems into one that would work for us. Ms Clinton's plan may not be the best but at least she's looking towards a start which is better than what most are doing & even the presenting of a national health care plan is a step that most others are refusing to do. She was slamed the last time she brought this up & even then it's time was well over due.
I'd love to see her (once she's in the Oval Office) set up a commision to look at what the rest of the world is doing & go from there.
As it is outside of the wealthy one of the most important attractions of ione's job today is it's health benifits & those range anywhere from complete coverage at hardly any cost to no coverage & they either pay out of pocket, get their own coverage or go without. Much of the population that I see are trapped by their on the job health care coverage. Retire or quit, forget it your coverage costs skyrockets & the actual coverage plumets (don't tell me about Medicare coverage I opted for as much coverage as possible & that's slim for someone who needs a lot of it & very costly to boot). Your kids are screwd once the turn 18 (with the exception of a few states that are only now just changing that coverage to age 23-26 weither they're in college or not. Unions usually provide better coverage for their people because they are in a beter position to bargin for it but their getting hit too as we see from the new Auto contract. The Drug manufactures are making a killing on the living. My mother used to raise dogs, we have one of her's, she mentioned a medication & I said that that's the same thing my son takes. We were sure it couldn't be the same because she paid about .50 per pir for her dog's perscription when my son's cost about $5 for the same pill, it turns out to be the exact same pill & then we found out r=that this isn't uncommon. Canada's become an American market place for many older & not so old who are in need of cheaper med's, there's absolutely no just reason for this, it's a shame.
The high costs of liability medical insurance is uncalled for. Malepractice is more a threat than a reality, it's the insurance companies scapegoat for unduly raping the medical community. IN the Boston aarea yrs ago we had a scandle at a day care facility, three people were charged with abuse (falsely in the opinion of many) this gave the insurance companies the excuse they needed to hit this industry with uncalled price gouges for premium to be paid for even though incidents of this kind were extremely uncommon & still are even 15 yrs later but the costs of those premiums are still sky high even with the general knowledge that these 3 were not guilty of what they'd been convicted of. This is what the malepractice insurance is about high costs for high profits! Many of our elderly even though they're covered by medicare & medicade have to make the discision between medical care &/or prescriptions or decent food shopping, that's a system gone broke.
Much of the insurance industry today believes that they are the botton line on what type of medicane & medical procedures are exceptable too. They decide weither or not some prescriptions & procedures will be covered regurdless of what the medical staff may say. Many companies just routinely deny pretty much anything as policy & then it's a case for the sickly sucker to start chasing the insurance money down for the medical parctice that's getting the same shaft as the insured, that's part of what's killing the patient & the doctor, aside from the insurance companies overwhelming both to death in paper work that neither can afford to keep up with. So both doctor & patient head towards becoming bankrupt. The government is just as bad as the insurance companies in this aspect, they are extremely slow sometimes in paying they per set undercutting costs, it's funny that everyone except the uninsured pays out so little for services rendered that costs so much higher for the same & the payment is usually collected upon reciept from the same too or else the leg breaker comes for the deed to the family ranch or whatever else.
Anyone who thinks the system works hasn't had much experience dealing with it or is well off or one of the lucky ones to either have a very good plan from work or belongs to a very healthy family!

Barry