Every time I've been to an ER, the bill was to the hospital.

Even so, your criticism of the link I posted above was that it applied to doctors & their practices, not hospitals.

you didn't see a doctor for free, trust me.

there is a bill from the hospital, and a bill from the doctor... if you had something special done. A lot of time, ER docs are included in the ER fees... because they work for the ER. When I went to the hospital in August, I got a $4000 bill from the hospital and $3000 bill for the MRI machine use or something stupid like that

You don't get it because you have lived in a richer area all the time. A HUGE issue in El Paso is our county hospital Thomason Hospital. They are never able to meet budget and always are having to ask for the county to raise taxes to get the hospital out of debt. Why? because a majority of El Pasoans are not insured, and we have a high level of people living below the poverty line.

instead of forcing everyone to pay into a health care system the government needs to reduce waste and reform the broken HMO for profit system. Health care should not be about pure profit. It is time to take all the pharmaceutical commercials off of the television and heavily regulate/ dismantle the HMOs, replacing them an affordable and accessible insurance that every American can afford. The main problem with our health care system is that it is geared toward treatment instead of prevention, for obvious reasons but that is the problem. Regulation can institute some of the good socialist principles while at the same time keeping the system in private hands.


I owe hospitals upwards of 15,000 dollars and it would have been nice to have health insurance. Oh well, it's not like I have the money to pay them anytime soon.

This post has been edited by The Fanatic: Feb 4 2008, 01:54 PM

people were complaining about illegal immigrants getting treated in hospitals and US taxpayers have to foot the bill before. now they say US tax payers dont carry the brunt of unpaid/uninsured medical expenses?

theres nothing worse then someone who doesnt have insurance (even though they can afford it) seeking medical treatment. if you are one of those people, go by your own actions and dont ever see a doctor/get treatment, have your child in a hospital etc. everyone gets sick

unless you are perfectly healthy or paying like an ungodly amount of medical insurance/covering 100% on your own, you are costing the average person some amount of change.

edit: i totally agree with taking drug ads off the television/media. the US is one of the last countries to even allow that

and hospitals do their damn hardest to not "absorb the cost" they will go to the ends of the earth before they do that.

Thirded.



I'm tired of all the hard-on pills being advertised every 5 minutes.

I think this is something almost all of us can agree on.

This post has been edited by Spectatrix: Feb 4 2008, 05:04 PM

ya'll need to quit watching the Playboy Channel

Who in there right mind would do this? If I could afford insurance I would purchase it (actually my new job may offer my insurance in a few months yay!!!)

apparently a lot of healthy young men don't buy insurance.

Not me, anything could happen even if you are healthy. Sometimes you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and sometimes that happens to be in the path of a TTU Citibus while walking to class...

exactly

So how would communist healthcare change ANY of this?

People are talking about Communist healthcare?!?

Where???

If by Communist healthcare you mean forcing EVERYONE to pay for health insurance, not just those that actually realize its a necessity... then a lot