@Dirk -- clearly you are someone who never expects to be diagnosed with a serious illness and then lose your job.

WOW. Can I borrow your crystal ball?

@Phil -- I hear the issue of slavery is mighty pressing. And lowering those job-crippling taxes on buggy whips.

Phil

they only said they would abandon it. Are you another LW lemming that swallowed the hook on Obama's lies?

This just show how wrong Our failed leader is. He seem to be on the wrong side of all american issues..................Check out this site when you fine time .It will show that the democrats new OBama wasn't a natural born citizen..............http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=H3aCfR8rmrw

RANDY YOU SOUND LIKE ONE OF THOSE CRADLE TO GRAVE PARASITES ON THE TAXPAYERS DOLE I'LL BET YOUR FATHER WISHES HE WOULD HAVE RECIEVED ORAL SEX THE NIGHT YOU WERE CONSEAVED

Actually, Tom, my father was very proud of me. One of my many accomplishments was that I could spell 'conceived' and I didn't resort to posting in all caps.

Randy1949: You are the wind beneath my wings! :-)

I sure dont want to rely on the goverment for all my health care. Roads okay Military okay. Education - the suck, rules and regulations - suck

@Mark -- You want to rely on your employer for it? You want to rely on a for-profit company that will collect your premium all the years you're healthy and then drop you or price you out of coverage when you actually need some treatment?

People like Mr. Sensenbrenner who were born wealthy and have their health coverage paid for by taxpayers never have to worry.

Tom, you don't need to scream. We can hear you just fine.

But... but... but... THE FREE MARKET WILL SAVE US!!!!

::facepalm::

Replace it with nothing
Private market created the best healthcare system on the plannet

Yup -- http://tinyurl.com/lnkdes.

Try to get this one out of your head.

Steve: Really? Where? Who's the lucky country?

Once everyone who does not want or need health insurance is forced to have it, Paul Hipp will find he can't get a doctors appointment. Then he can make a whiny non factual song about America being #74. And his homeless brother is still homeless 3 years later thanks to the food stamp, bank failure President - Obama.

Craig, what did you think the 37th ranking is based on. Number of cotton swabs? Best looking nurses?

No, delivery of health care.

Weird bit of hairsplitting there son.

Keith Schmitz

you need to recheck your facts. The US system is overpriced, healthcare inflation is a problem here as in other countries, but the US has the finest, #1 for responsiveness. You can try and twist mortality rates and torture the stats to try and arrive at #37 for US, but fact is we have the among the finest in the world. So you propose to destroy out economy and currency to move America up a few notches on some socialist ranking?

Check with Wisonsin commisioner of insurance too!

Repleaing Obamacare is a great idea, and will get hiring restarted. You can't have true recovery while a socialist who can't count is in office. He's unaffordable: http://www.cobrahealth.com/Unaffordable.html

Vicki, those darn Republicans..If only they had let Obama tax more and spend more, then we could be like Greece also!

HIRSP premiums and out of pocket costs are about double that of private market coverage, compared to those without a pre-existing condition. Half of the actual cost of providing HIRSP coverage is funded through a fee on insurers doing business in Wisconsin;the actual total 'cost' for coverage of the 'average person with a pre-existing condition' is about 4X of those without said 'pre-existing condition'.

Really, Craig? Try being 62, married and with an income that falls right above the BadgerCare cutoff. My 'choice' was a catastrophic coverage plan with a $10,000 per year deductible that would have left me unable to pay our usual preventive care out of pocket like we do now. We're both of us in the best of health, too, and that was the cheapest we could find.

I was hoping that the insurance exchanges might give us a few more options, but that's out of the question now.

Craig, you obviously have never sold health insurance. If you take a basic plan from a more comprehensive plan, there is typically no underwriting. If you go from a basic plan to more comprehensive, they might be able to underwrite you depending on your state's laws.

Craig Casey I was not talking about short term medical insurance, they have a very limited client base. I know many agents sell these first and a few months later will sell a longer term plan. It opens you up to liability should one of them wind up with a cronic sickness and become uninsurable.

Randy if you were 30 years younger, your premiums would be half of what they are. They are not averaged out, but younger do pay a bit more to offset your costs- a slight bit. What happened to me was business plain and simple. Ready for the funny part? It was a non profit insurance company that stuck it to me! How ironic is that?

@Craig -- I know how it works. Group insurance is pooled. That includes slightly higher premiums for everyone, but older and sicker people aren't priced out of the market.

Private insurance -- they price you as an individual, based on the statistics for your age group. So, even if you're half my age, your lower premiums are slightly higher to reflect the average 31 year old -- some of whom already have diabetes or obesity, or whatever. If you're already actually sick -- diabetes, cancer survivor, etc. -- forget being able to afford private coverage, ever.

We're all paying for one another's health costs in some shape or form. I think we'd be better off if we spread the risk as widely as possible.

Insurance companies have a whole department full of actuaries running the statistical analysis on what it will cost to insure someone and that indirectly determines your rates. You will be pooled with the group you are associated with(company, organization) and in many cases the insurance company will tell your org they will insure the group but person A will not be insured due to their high risk.

I find it ironic that the party that wants to go to the ends of the earth to save every poor shlep's life also champions aborting millions of unborn babies each year. I suppose one class is their voting demographic and the other is simply unwanted biological material. Most of the uninsurable people in this country have become so via poor life choices(overweight, smoking,drugs,alcohol) and now want the rest of us to subsidize those poor choices. I guess this is just more of the culture of victimhood that defines the Democratic party.

@Randy: no I don't. I work hard, exercise, live well within my means, don't do drugs or abuse alcohol. And I take responsibility for my actions. And I don't expect someone to pick up the bill when I make poor choices. In other words, the message from the Democratic party falls on deaf ears when it comes to me. I am not a victim.

Whether we have private or socialized medicine these tough choices have to be made. We will not have the money to fix everyone's medical problems. Currently the private health insurance companies make these decisions. Does anyone really think it will be better if the government were making these decisions? Look how well they take care of our veterans via the VA. Anyone want VA level medical coverage? I don't. And why is it so many Canadians come to the US for medical care when they have free health care at home?

Whose fault is it when someone gets cancer? Many, many people who make the "right" decisions" get fatal diseases like this all the time. Sending them into poverty (aka: medical bankruptcy) or worse is simply discrimination against the sick. Healthcare, like education, is a basic human right. Unfortunately, Obama gave a big corporate bailout to the insurance industry.

RE: Canada, they indeed have Universal Health Care and the very weathy come to the US as private, for-profit heath services are for the most part inaccessible (its actually unconstitutional in Canada). Thus, the very rich skip the queue. The middle-class go to India. The rest have to wait in long queues for non-urgent care services.

I have extensive experience on both sides of the border, and neither system works as well as it should, but in Canada the sick are not discriminated against. Within Canada's borders, everyone is in the same queue for the same treatment.

To your point, bailing out the banks and giving corporations tax breaks in the name of denying healthcare to the sick is grotesque, inhumane, uncivilized and, frankly, wrong.

@Victor: The problem with providing healthcare to all is the same problem we encounter with education: we spend tremendous amounts of $$$ on individuals who will either not benefit or utilize the gift they've been given. When something is free to individuals it is not valued. As unbalanced as our current system is it is a far better alternative than having the government make those decisions for us. This is why so many Canadians come here for healthcare.

There is always an inequality of access to resources in our society. It is not pretty but it is real. What level of healthcare should be available to everyone? In Canada everyone is in the same abysmal queue for services. I've worked too hard to allow the government to make decisions for me and my family's healthcare. I take personal responsibility for me and my family and providing healthcare for them. I don't expect the government to do it for me.

I think you are vastly over-estimating the # of medical tourists from Canada. Compared to the number of American medical tourists to India and China, it's a fraction of a percent I bet.

Healthcare can certainly be affordable. Letting the insurance companies set the rates is not the solution, as evidenced by the ever-increasing costs.

@235301 --" no I don't. I work hard, exercise, live well within my means, don't do drugs or abuse alcohol."

Same here. I don't smoke, and my BMI is at 23. But that's no guarantee against cancer or MS. And if one of those conditions should befall me before 65 -- I will just have to decline treatment. I refuse to leave my family penniless. You seem to be fortunate in that your hard work gives you enough income to purchase catastrophic health coverage. Mine doesn't.

@Victor -- I would happily wait in line for non-urgent services in return for the peace of mind of having the urgent services not bankrupt me.

@Randy: you wouldn't leave your family penniless for your healthcare but you are more than willing to have the taxpayers foot the bill? The taxpayers are not some faceless entity...they are me, you, your neighbors. Now, you alone won't bankrupt the government. But there are millions out there like you that, for whatever reason, have not been able to acquire healthcare for themselves. You add all of them up in aggregate and we cannot afford to foot the bill for that. The entitlement mentality in this country just disturbs me to no end. They believe the government and taxpayers exist to provide cradle to grave support for people.

And preventative services is not what is making healthcare so expensive these days. It is the expensive procedures requiring everything from MRIs to risky surgeries. I have no problem providing preventative services for people as it could provide a huge bang for the buck. But, will it really make a difference? Will it stop people from eating high levels of simple sugars and thereby reduce the diabetes epidemic? WIll it stop people from using drugs and alcohol and turning their brains into swiss cheese? I hardly think so....

@235301 -- Thank you for the lecture. The answer is yes, I would be just as happy for the taxpayer (of which I am one, by the way) to indemnify me against a medical catastrophe that may never happen. Just as you are perfectly happy to drive on taxpayer funded roads under taxpayer funded streetlights and flush your toilet into taxpayer funded sewers. Taxpayer funded armies keep you safe. You may choose not to send your children to public schools, but they are there for you if you couldn't afford to educate your children any other way. You're willing to let people like me pay for your healthcare indirectly through premiums and the extra cost of goods and services you provide, and if you do get sick, your insurance company reimburses the hospital a whole lot less than they would charge me until my money ran out, so I'm subsidizing you there too.

But you're like Sensenbrenner. You've got yours, and anyone who doesn't -- well it must be their own fault, right?