This country is far from nihilistic. Oz should stick to fixin' hearts and stop editorializing on that which he knows NOTHING. But I wonder if he'd be in favor of these solutions to the "health insurance crisis"?

1. More doctors. Why do medical schools limit their enroll so much that even highly qualified candidates can't get in??? Would that hurt Oz's bottom-line?
2. More doctors doing pro bono work. How 'bout that doctor Oz? You make so damn much money, how 'bout volunteering a year of your life to work for the unwashed masses in Appalachia or the Southwest???
3. Stop illegal immigration. This is a no brainer. Ah, but Oz is a heart surgeon. Sorry.
4. Reduce doctor's fees, instead of gouging me for $75 for a 3 minute office visit.
5. Restrict malpractice lawsuit awards to no more than $500,000. Too bad Silky Pony cleaned up already.

Note that the argument is never if anyone in this country is afforded health care.  It is always that so many don't have health insurance. 

The facts are that anyone, whether they are a citizen are not and whether they have money or not, that shows up at a hospital will be seen and treated.

Also, if you are 18 and under or 65 or older, there are already government programs that cover you if you either can not afford to pay for your own health care or you just don't want to pay. 

The fact is that there is no cost control on health care in this country.  Absolutly, no one except the insurance company asks what a procedure will cost.  Not the patient, not the doctor, not the hospital.  If it is a government health care program, costs are kept down by two methods:  rationing and sticking it to the health care provider with reimbursement that doesn't cover the health care providers cost let alone a profit. 

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. . . . “--Joseph Goebbels

I think Oprah’s doctor is a practioner of this quote of Joseph Goebbels.  Of course the quote continues:  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” 

There are not 9 million children without health insurance.  Every state has Medicaid.  Every state has SCHIP.  Each is retroactive.  If a child shows up in an emergency room or hospital for treatment without either and needs treatment all hospitals have people on staff with the sole responsibility of getting children qualified for some government program so the bill gets paid.

 There is even a program in my state that reimburses the parents any money they spend on health insurance premiums.  9 million is a flat out lie.

Why doesn't someone ask the good cardiologist what he charges for his services. If I were a person who had no health insurance, what would it cost me to see him for an office visit?

The problem is that the HMOs take in $Billions from customer premiums and pay out $Hundreds of millions in health care costs per Q. All of the healthy people are paying the costs for all of the ill people. We do have socialized helthcare, it's just run by Aetna and AIG and Keiser, etc instead of the government. Helthcare costs have sky rocketed under this system because no one really knows what they are paying for the services and aren't really interested anyway because it gives the impression that they are "free" except for a small co-pay in many cases. Once a service industry is seperated from the payer such that it appears "free" there is no longer any control on the runaway cost of it.

If the Automobile industry addopted this model we'd all be paying $300-$500 a month in Car buying insurance and then everyone would be driving around in Mercedes, BMWs, Rolls Royces, Ferraris, etc. Except of course those unlucky ones with out Car buying insurance. They'd be driving Hondas and Toyotas and some would be complaining about the Automobile gap.

I was at a meeting yesterday, and the final financials from FY2006 were provided to us.  Our company brought in just under $7.5 million in monies from health insurance premiums and Medicare/Medicaid in 2006.  Of that money, just over 85% went right back out the door to doctors, hospitals, pharmacy's, nursing agencies, etc.  to pay for services rendered to just over four million members.  So for a little under 15% admin costs, we were able to move 7.5 million bucks from 4.1 million members to thousands of providers, and do it with a very high degree of customer satisfaction.  To offer some perspective for this info, for every dollar that is bugeted for education, the US Department of Education takes a 20% "passtrough" to support it's own infrastructure.  Once that 80 cents gets to the states, the state DOEs take their "passtrough" to local government, who then takes their "passtrough" before the school district gets the money.  So what starts as $1.00 becomes .51 cents by the time it get's to the kids, which comes up to about 50% in administrative costs.  So, we took in $7.5 million, and paid out over $6 million to providers while keeping about $1.17 million for operating expenses.  If you want to know where the problem with healthcare expenses are, it isn't with the insurers... it's with the providers.

Although many folks hate the HMO concept, they are the only thing helping to keep providers from acting like oil companies and charging whatever they want.  Our premiums are based on what we pay out to providers, so if providers charge less, premiums go down... but just try getting providers to charge less.  Patients may know what a good price for a gallon of milk, a pair of shoes, or a pair of movie tickets is, but they have no clue what a good price for fixing a broken arm is, nor do they want to know because they aren't paying for it... their insurance is.

And I see once again that the old Howard Dead chestnut of the government insuring "all the kids!" is coming into play again.  What you never hear is that all of these plans are assuming that about 90% of children are already covered by their parents, and that the parents will need to continue to provide that insurance.  You also never hear that no matter how "free" the coverage is, about 3% of parents are too ignorant to get their kids covered.  So what the Libs are really saying is that the government will provide insurance to about 6% of the kids, while the parents who are already paying for their kids pay for the coverage of these additional kids.  The other thing that's never mentioned about what Vermont did was that Dean paid for that 6% using Federal Medicaid for Kids taxdollars that were slated for Vermont, and snagged unspent Medicaid for Kids dollars from other states to make up the difference.  This worked great for Vermont, but if every state uses 100% of it's Medicaid for Kids bucks, there's no more Peters to rob to pay Paul.