So what? Are you going to force people to have health insurance?

50% of thepopulation does not see a dentist, irrespective of insurance. In your America are you going to force people to go to the dentist?

In the Janesville school district only 76.2% of students graduate. How are you going to force the 15.8% of students to graduate?

Do I havea responsibility to pay for the medical care of illegal aliens? You and others consistently site a figure of 45-50 million uninsured. How many of those people are living in the US legally?

The uninsured can include those between jobs or students just out of school.

The Census Bureau estimates that the average family that loses its health insurance will be reinsured within 5 1/2 months; 75 percent will be reinsured within one year.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 21 million and 31 million Americans may be uninsured for the entire year, including about 12 million foreign-born residents many of whom are here illegally.

The largest group, 42 percent, of longer-term uninsured, about 19 million, are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Most are healthy and could afford health insurance but choose to gamble, opting to run the risk of going uninsured rather than forgoing current consumption. This is motivated in part by the ease of acquiring government-regulated health insurance after becoming ill or obtaining free treatment at a hospital emergency room if unable to pay.

While the number of those without health insurance has grown by 3 million between 1996-2003, that's primarily because the nation's population has grown, much of it from illegal immigration. In fact, the percentage of those without insurance, 15.6 percent, is unchanged over the period.

Factcheck, your ploy is to pretend that a rotating aggregate or a snapshot is the same thing as a permanent population. Fifty-nine million is the aggregate number of those who at some time during the year, even if only for a day, were without health insurance. This is a meaningless statistic just as 40 million working adults is meaningless.

At any time perhaps 50 million Americans have a head cold. And during the course of a year, probably 200 million Americans will have a cold at one time or another. This is hardly the same thing as saying that 200 million Americans have a permanent head cold.

2005 figures, 40 million WORKING adults had no health insurance.

That bureaucracy administers health care(medicare, medidaid) for 300% less than private insurance. There are over 300 million people in the U.S., hence 50 million uninsured, and more millions underinsured.Some states have already capped malpractice awards, and they still pay the same rates for insurance as their neighbors.When health insurance is over 16% of GDP, and rising faster than the rate of inflation, that is a crisis. When drug companies make twice the profit that oil companies do, and spend more for advertising than R&D, that is a crisis. Only people that are covered have the best care in the world, and the insurance companies go to great lengths to not cover sick people, and deny claims for others. In Arizona, the State Insurance Board(physicians and insurers) review all disputed claims, and only settle in the patients favor 2% of the time. An independent medical board reviewed those claims and said , at a minimum, 20% should have been settled in favor of the patient. Get the insurance companies out of the middle, and there would be enough money to cover everyone. I know people who have moved to Canada, and they are very pleased with the health care there.

mythcheck (aka factcheck)

Most single-payer advocates point to life expectancy and infant mortality as evidence that single-payer systems produce better health outcomes than the U.S. And, indeed, the U.S. has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than many nations with a single-payer system.

The problem is that life expectancy and infant mortality tell us very little about the quality of a health care system. Life expectancy is determined by a host of factors over which a health care system has little control, such as genetics, crime rate, gross domestic product per capita, diet, sanitation, and literacy rate.

Cuba has a single payer system, as does canada, no one is beating a path to either nation because their infant mortality rates are lower than in then united states.

By the way, please site your source that 50 million are uninsured? How many are US citizens? How many are Young people who choose to risk not having health insurance? How many are college students who do not live at home but may qualify for student health services. You see factcheck, Yes, health insurance is expensive because health care is expensive, especially in the United States where we have an abundance of quality physicians, state-of-the-art equipment, extraordinary techniques and a smorgasbord of drugs. Unlike the socialized systems in Canada and Europe, Americans can actually access these services in a timely fashion without having to wait for months or years.

What is your solution? Restrict access even more. Our health-care costs are compounded by a plague of plaintiffs' attorneys, nuisance malpractice suits, the drawn- out Food and Drug Administration approval process for new drugs, government regulations mandating excessive coverage, and medical consumers who have been conditioned to be insensitive to prices because of third-party payers and government subsidies.

The serious problems are confined to about 10 million to 15 million who can't afford insurance but make too much to qualify for Medicaid, and another 2 million to 3 million who are uninsurable because of specific diseases. But these problems are manageable. We already subsidize health insurance for those who can't afford it. So we can do a little more of that and provide special coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Let's look at the portion of the glass that's full, not just the empty part. According to the Census Bureau, more than 247 million Americans had either private insurance or were enrolled in a government health program in 2005. That's almost 85 percent of the population. As many as 14 million of the uninsured are adults and children who are already eligible for existing government programs but have failed to enroll.

We have health insurance problems, to be sure, but no "crisis," and no justification for converting the world's highest quality health-care system into another plodding government bureaucracy.

The infant mortality rate in this COUNTRY is the highest of all industrialized nations, even though we spend more per person than any other country. 50 million with no health insurance in the U.S., the richest country on earth, that is just wrong!

rickwantsmoney, part of the problem is if some of those people you are talking about actually go to work, for$7-10 an hour, they will lose their health care. Where is the incentive to work? If you are only paying $700 a month for a couple you are getting a great deal, the average in this country is almost $8000 a person, per year! We need national health care.

I have a very different comment, than these sanctimonious and mean ones, especially of RickWantsMoney (whose handle only betrays his lack of morality). I want to point out that some of the things listed under "health" are not health related at all. If the argument is that a lack of job leads to bad health, I'd say, Well, then anything does. I want public health officials and physicians to stop dictating every aspect of our lives under the pretense that they are health related. It reminds me of how my physicians asks me to fill out a form that asks such questions as whether I regularly wear a seat-belt. Also, reminds me of how physicians weigh in on drunk driving laws. This is really none of their business, and we have to have more than money and health as our values. We should value human life, for example, and as such, all people should have the right to some basic health care. Only the most callous person would allow someone to die because they can't afford a minor procedure.

One more comment, and then I'll be quiet:)

Someone is bound to post, "Well, it's hard to people to eat healthy when it costs more to buy healthy food than junk." (and I agree, in a lot of cases, that's true.)

But WALKING is free. Burn off more calories than you put in. It's a simple concept.

Health care should only be available for those who a) are physically or mentally handicapped, b) those who can afford to pay for it themselves, c) those who actively try to live as completely healthy a life as possible (no SMOKING; little DRINKING; no hard drugs, no playing "couch potato", get moderate exercise and eat right) and d) those who work a full-time job and have an employer large enough to get them covered through a group policy. I agree with "who". My spouse and I pay over $700 a month for our health insurance (we're self employed with no "live at home" dependents). We WORK and PAY for this ourselves. We both know a lot of people in and around Southeastern WI. We can name at least two dozen that are getting covered that COULD work but make no HARD effort to do so when they don't HAVE to. We don't know ANYONE who is seeking employment and has refused a job that was "beneath them".

The old adage is true. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

We both don't mind a few of our tax dollars going to help those who truly need it, but why do I have to support someone who abuses the system and then drinks beer all day and lives to watch QVC?

Health care is not a right. It's working poorly in the countries that have it.

When did health care become a right for every citizen??? I have to pay through the teeth for mine and it ticks me off to think I have to pay for someone else's who sits on their butt and thinks it is right to have it! There's this phrase all you should memorize,EARN IT!!!!!

Well, sannio, how's "anti-social" health care working out? Maybe you should read those numbers again. Nearly every country in the world understands that basic public health is not just a right, it's a necessity. At some point going the other way on the highway starts to look like a pretty dumb idea.
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marymac4, any change from GM won't be statistically reported for a year or more.

I wouldn't worry about this too much. As soon as we have social health care, we'll be forced to be healthy like they do in other nanny states. Hey, you wanted to be told how to live you life, right?

did the counties wage average drop after GM closed?