[Matt Algren]

Originally Posted by Daniel

Does insurance pay for vanity procedures like botox and getting your eyes down? No!

So what procedures are you talking about that medicare pays for now?

If you are talking about ABORTION, then have the courage of your convictions. However, my response to you will be exactly the same as my first post on this thread: abortion can be a life-saving procedure.

The bottom line for me is this: once you take away a woman's ability to have an abortion (even though I wish they didn't happen), you have a situation where the quacks are performing them in backrooms with coat hangers.

Do you really want that?

Interesting bit of information following the Rush Limbaugh incident in Hawaii: They've had a form of near-universal health care since 1974.

Although its Pacific Island location makes the costs of everything--from gasoline to milk to ice cream to housing--the highest in the nation, health care premiums in Hawaii, for comprehensive care with small co-pays and deductibles, are nearly the lowest and their costs per medicare beneficiary are the lowest in the nation.

Why? There are a variety of reasons, most traceable to universality. With everyone covered by primary care, emergency room visits tend to be for real emergencies, not the non-emergent care mainland ERs dispense for people without coverage. That reduces the costs of ERs and the costs of non-emergent medicine since patients can be handled less expensively and more effectively by their primary docs. Hospitals have not overbuilt, acquiring expensive machines to compete with their neighbors for patients. Insurance companies have instituted screening and other measures to improve wellness among their covered populations.

Now, of course, Rush does not live in Hawaii and so his costs are not covered by the Hawaiian insurance system, but having that "socialist" system for more than 3 decades has not reduced the quality of the care he received. Who would have thunk it!