CNN on US Healthcare: $1,000 Dollars For A Toothbrush!

Insurance companies execs are not stupid. They are NOT just overlooking these bills - come on CNN! As if ..LOL! The insurance companies make common agreements to let this stuff pass through and in unison put their premiums up to make up for the expenses. There is no real Health Insurance free market obviously. It would be impossible to get away with this kind of inefficiency if there were! This has all the hall marks of a backdoor public healthcare system. Insurance companies have probably been pushed into it via beauracratic contacts in Washington who are encouraging/intimadating them into it in return for some promised favors down the road.

Option #3 seems so horrible only for the fact that people are constantly brought to the hospital with no means to pay for healthcare and didn't prepare for it.

This is new to society as a whole because in recent history, when someone was sick, or dying technology could not revive them or help them and people would accept the fact that they are dead.

However, now medical technology has advanced so fast, that we can help a lot more people and heal them, but its gone too fast to where this latest technology is expensive. Whats worse, this is an expense most people don't know about or care about so they dont save for it. Why should they? They don't deal with the prices or how expensive things actually are.

I think the solution is more education on the pricing of healthcare. More self responsibilty and perhaps a program to promote the idea of how valuable private health insurance is early in your life (noone wants to die young while they are healthy). and Use health savings accounts and other methods to encourage people to save for when they are older and can only afford High deductible low premium plans.

As for everyone else (chronic health problems from birth or early on)...you can't expect insurance agency to solve these problems...it just isn't profitable or feasable. Theres too much risk. However, you can offset their TAX risk to make it more feasable. Maybe, for every insurance firm that sets up a fund in their premiums to donate to private organizations that help the needy, get an extra tax break then normal. Let private non profits handle the needy. Fund them with money from the high profit corporate sector. RIght now as it is, corporate taxes are so high, companies don't give as much because they have little net income when all is said and done. Offsetting their Tax risk by giving to specific cause would be a way to channel this money to help the problem that you have in society.

Hospitals aren't raking in the dough, they're trying to deal with the fact that gov't has hamstrung them. The ER costs hospitals so much money that they have to spread the costs around to other areas. We already have a horribly inefficient national health care system in the ER.

To my knowledge, only three options exist to address this issue. If anyone knows of other options, I'd definitely be interested in hearing them. Which do people here agree with?
1.) Make hospitals public enterprises (I know everyone here disagrees with this one)
2.) Require all users of health care to get insurance, which includes everyone (I most visitors here disagrees with this one)
3.) Allow hospitals to turn away the sick at dying without insurance from the ER, so they are truly private enterprises. This would mean allowing a person to bleed to death on the doorstep of the hospital.

I have my own opinion, but I'd be interested in hearing other thoughts. Most of the debate I've seen is really negative towards option #1 and #2 without mentioning that the consequence is either the status quo or option #3. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to simply fight against #1 and #2 without embracing their consequences.

Either we have health care for all, or we don't. We are paying $150 for Tylenol because the U.S. has a horribly inefficient "public option" called the E.R., which is the worst of all worlds.

Let me know what you think.