A Medicare-Like Plan for the Non-Elderly
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/a-medicare-like-plan-for-th...

____My Comments___

Insurance is about the laws of probability and works when insurance companies can get money from a larger segment of the population in which the worse is not likely to happen, and in which cost will not exceed revenue. Insurance is about the business of making money.

I am not sure any kind of insurance in the health care system has ever made sense or should ever have been made legal. The majority of hospitals have to be subsidized by local and other governments. To me, I would think the Federal Government would be money ahead to simply put an income tax in place of say 5% to subsidize all Federally Approved Hospitals who are controlled by locally elected boards similar to school boards and that are mandated to balance science and cost and to operate within realistic budgets.

Rather than all the insurance bullshit, simply make hospital care "free" to all Americans as paid by the 5% tax. Stop all the damned mindless paperwork rather than spending a fortune in the name of pretending to streamline that paperwork.

That is just my opinion and to me is common sense. Course, I fully realize, implementation of this or any other plan is much more complicated and filled with potential pitfalls than simplistic talk of any kind might suggest.

___
One more comment:

Many hospitals today that are operated by for profit companies were hospitals originally started in local communities as charity hospitals and were never intended by the communities in which the people made sacrifices to build those hospitals to be for profit institutions. The take over of these hospitals by various entities was and is largely based in corruption.

Back in the old days Howard Hughes started two companies. He started a hospital which was intended to be a charity institution. And then he founded a for profit company that was largely set up to support the hospital. He and other like minded people of the period discovered the amount of money that could be siphoned from hospitals. Their good intentions turned to the dark side. The company he founded to support the hospital went broke. The hospital made money for the syndicate.