I've covered the continued attack on our Emergency Care Facilities that illegal aliens have imposed, but now it is reaching the mainstream -- minus the real cause of their strain of course. You simply can't have this continued flow of......

The per capita expenditure of the French in 2003 was a bit more than half of the US. tables at

Now I know he is a hard core LIBERAL.

Just for James, I wonder if the study controlled for whether a city was encouraging illegal immigration by not checking immigration status for rendering services (such as hospital care) or not. Just asking.

Thus your telephone system is designed to handle Mothers Day. It overloads on 9/11 type events.

The cheapest way to provide for surge capacity is to learn first aid. And keep some medical supplies available. Providing you are breaking no drug laws by keeping pain killers or other drugs around for those who weren't prescribed them.

The solution is to have a clinic next to the ER, and triage the patients, sending those that are coming just because they don't have a Primary Care Physician over to the clinic. Also check IDs and if you find illegal aliens go ahead and treat them, i....

Wrong, routine care has been proven again and again to LOWER overall healthcare costs. Check-ups and routine health care is MUCH cheaper than expensive procedures and treatments of serious diseases/conditions/complications that could have been avoided by routine health care.

http://hffo.cuna.org/story.html?doc_id=982&sub_id=12433

I don't contend that care for pregnancy isn't beneficial. Indeed, so is putting servicable tires on a car. The latter, however, is not covered by "insurance" because it's considered a routine expense and not a "risk."

My preference is to cover pregnancy and even routine checkups. Doing so might even hold down lifetime costs.

Still, Steve's point that including those things substantially increases the costs of insurance--and, thus, serves as a barrier to entry for those at the bottom--is certainly true. It may be that there should be policies that cheaper and cover only catastrophic illnesses and others that are more expensive/inclusive.

James,

I think Steve's point is quite clear--he views pregnancy as "elective" or "avoidable" and should therefore not be covered by insurance. Again, many heart attacks are "avoidable"--should they be covered?

[*********] Pregnancy is a "routine life event" but it also carries health risks to both mother and child and MUST be covered by health insurance. Denying health insurance to pregnant women results in unnecessary (and avoidable) illness and death. It is that simple. BTW --are you pro-life?

[*********] Access to comprehensive health insurance (unlike car insurance or homeowners insurance) has life and death consequences. Health insurance does and SHOULD cover the "maintenance" of the human body, and not just emergencies. One surely "chooses" to have a yearly check-up, but those yearly check ups help avoid emergent health problems that are MUCH more expensive to fix after the person gets sick.

Also, health insurance does not cover "everything". Usually it does not cover elective procedures (like plastic surgery ) as I mentioned before. You are building a straw man when you say there is an "expectation that insurance cover everything". There is no such expectation. People are fully aware that they cannot get breast implants if they are on medicare. They do and should expect to receive coverage for medication and treatment that enable them to AVOID expensive acute illnesses, complications, injuries or death. Including coverage for pregnancy.
[*********]

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Emergency room upgrades could easily be accomplished with a shift in priorities. I doubt that shift will take place. The glory does not rest in effective health care delivery but in impressive buildings.

Also keep in mind that an advocacy group agitating for more tax dollars produced this "report". If we believe every document such as this we would have to tax ourselves to death. It's economics, scarce resources and how to allocate them.

I have yet to see hospitals push for immediate care centers that can stitch up a cut or treat a sinus infection without using the tremendous resources of a typical emergency room. It's a simple cost effective solution but administrators and boards are not interested.

I find it funny the health care cabal has screwed it up (according to the report anyway) but points to the taxpayers for $$$ to fix it. Physicians heal thy selves.