Do you think that free 'national' health care would lead to overuse of the health care system in the U.S.?

Darn good question Spree. I watched "Sicko" recently too. I must say I was persuaded by some of his arguments. However, I reminded myself that Michael Moore never makes "objective" movies ... he makes movies to support a position he has.

I am lucky to have a great insurance plan that completely covered (other than about $5000 in copays over about 15 months) my cancer treatment.

There are a lot of people who are not so lucky, who are uninsured.

I do believe that a national healthcare system does cause some shortages in treatments. I also believe that it encourages more preventive care, just as most health insurance plans do. When you do not do preventive care because you have no insurance, this tends to lead to long-term chronic health issues that lead people to visit the ER over and over (diabetes, kidney failure, etc.).

When you check the numbers, every country where there is "socialized" medicine or a national health care plan, has a longer life expectancy than we do. So if you have to limp around for an extra year to get your knee replacement ... isn't that worth living 5 more years?

What you get with "national" health care is rationing. Certain procedures and medications just won't be available. Need a new hip? Your appointment with the orthopedic surgeon will be sometime next year.

Patients in the UK and Canada can "demand" all they want, but they don't get their surgery until it's their turn (unless they want to pay out of pocket). My father-in-law (British) had a bladder catheter for a year waiting for his prostate surgery. In the US, he would have had that done within days.

It's not completely a bad thing. Maybe some very expensive end of life care will become unnecessary when people die waiting for it.

I had a patient yesterday whose family refused to take any responsibility for her care. Their attitude: do everything, but don't send us the bill. Her physicians did her surgery for free, because she needed it. A financial safety net would be helpful, but all care at the taxpayers' expense? No thank you.

There's a persistent myth that people with government-supplied health insurance like Medicaid overuse the system. While there are glaring examples that it happens, that isn't the overall situation. As your own experience points out, payment really doesn't seem to correlate at all with use/overuse, and those who will overuse the system seem perfectly happy to do so no matter what their insurance status, or whether they're insured at all. The great majority of people simply have better things to do with their time than go to the doctor.

If anything, I'd expect people in a universal insurance situation not to have to have such fragmented care, and they might actually wind up needing fewer visits to accomplish the same purposes they now get by going many times to free clinics and emergency departments.

I think the people who do that sort of thing have an illness in and of itself. I don't think that the average person that benefits from a National Health Care program would overuse or abuse it. After all, how many people actually enjoy going to the doctor? It's also been my experience that overcrowding and long waits are already an issue, but people with very serious problems are treated first. And of course, people caught abusing the system should have to face fines and possibly psychiatric treatment.

If people think health care is expensive now -

Wait till it's FREE

Years ago, our state goofed and provided a health insurance policy

with $25 copay for your primary and $10 copay for ER visits

One enterprising father took the plan - and now all Doctor's visits

are at the ER - they pay $10 and get seen - no appointment necessary

all other fees paid - including meds -

no wonder that plan was never offered again

but those that have it - can keep it till they retire

Whatever the cost, I think it's worth it. My own father, who was self-employed, paid A LOT of money for really crappy insurance. As a result, he rarely went to the doctor when he should have because it cost a lot out of pocket. The doctor he did go to treated him for years for an enlarged prostate. Without decent insurance, you don't have a lot of options. In January 2008, he died of metastatic prostate cancer. I truely believe if he had better health insurance, they could have caught it sooner and he'd still be with us.

My hope would be that if health insurance was free, people would go to the doctor MORE often and to the ER less often.

Well Sreedog, technically, the HMOs aren't willing enough to let us have are insurance, but if they go down then are doctors will go down. So Spreedog I think it kinda has to work this way, or something, I'm not sure I forgot all about it in Micheal Moore's documentary movie, Sicko. I'm certain you shall find the answer soon.

Well, with National Health Care, or Universal Health Care, it is not free. The money to fund it comes from tax dollars. So, it is no charity. Someone might argue that they don't want to pay for someone else's services, but think of this, we pay for libraries, although some of us do not use them, same for the police, the fire department, and public education. America has some of the greatest health care facilities, but many people cannot afford it. www.healthcareforamericanow.org