Yes, Medicare for all. After all, this was supposed to be health CARE reform - reform granting and guaranteeing access to health CARE - not health INSURANCE reform. All too many of us on this side of the wall of Congress know that Insurance isn't a guarantee of health care. On the contrary. Quite often it's an impediment to health care.

Risk pools in health insurance are, quite frankly, paid for in lives and quality of lives. Not a pleasant answer is it? Ultimately, we MUST accept that health care and health reform isn't JUST about money. It's about LIVES. Lives lost, lives compromised, lives impacted because of what happened to friends, family members, coworkers, etc. Health care isn't just something that happens on a sterile balance sheet handled by accountants at the end of a day. It's something involving people like me, who ended up on disability in large part because the system is so flat out dysfunctional that not only could I not get insurance because of my health ("pre-existing conditions") but even public health required insurance to see the sorts of doctors I needed. That led to my having to get Medicaid just to see the sorts of doctors I needed to see at Public Health which meant being declared fully disabled just because I don't have children. The series of failures there just makes my head hurt.

At the very least, our safety net isn't working AT ALL and needs to be fixed while they argue about how/if/when to fix the system as a whole. The poverty line is not figured accurately. It should be legally and morally reprehensible to discriminate against the childless who need help and in particular against the childless disabled. Public health should serve the PUBLIC - not the INSURED public. Medicaid should be the same for everyone and in all states. And there should be a program similar to SCHIP for adults to cover the gap between where Medicaid leaves off and really being HONESTLY able to get your own insurance starts. Or at least this is what I think should happen.

The Declaration of Human Rights in Article 25 states:

* (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
* (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

To do what our nation does - to deny health care for ability to pay, no matter why the person may be unable to pay - means to violate human rights. Or does our nation not care about Article 25?

I voted how I voted, in part, because I was l led to believe that if those people were elected I could expect health CARE reform that would ensure ACCESS not health INSURANCE kinda reform that would help the insurance companies and do very little to help with access.

We the people elected Congress and the President, not the Insurance Industry, Big Pharma, the AMA, or any other industry organization. WE are the ones to whom you should be listening - not the industry lobbyists. So why are their voices being listened to and why are they seeming to get their demands at the expense of what we the people desire? It's a question all in Congress - and the President - will eventually have to answer.

On a related note, it's time for the United States to start remembering Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. We're doing quite horribly on the things laid out as rights by that. Health care is one of the things listed in Article 25 as a right. Surely in all the time since December 1948 someone has had a chance to read it and understand its meaning well enough to begin proper implementation of those rights.

This is a question that really must be answered - and not in darkened halls or behind closed doors. It's a question that must be answered openly, directly to the people. Why *are* the insurance companies being given so much input, pressure, etc. into the "reform"? In many ways, its the insurance companies, their products and how they operate that ARE the problem with "health care". Really, what's the problem with health care for a lot of us isn't even "health care" itself, it's ACCESS to health care and being able to pay for it - things made basically impossible by how the current system is set up so that pretty much everything and everyone (including in many cases even what's left of the public health and public mental health system) requires some type of insurance just for any type of access at all and that even with insurance your access may still be limited to a small number of doctors, doctors or hospitals of poor quality, or you may routinely be denied what is FOR YOU basic care and/or with the insurance your care may still be unaffordable (and particularly so due to the increasing use of high copays and high deductibles - if you can even afford to buy the insurance).

Shelly.Muniz is right too, denial of care by insurance companies does result in physical, emotional and financial hardships. The way they're done in many ways is very cruel and inhumane and leaves quite a trail of suffering - not limited just to the patient, but the patient's family, the patient's creditors, employers and even our nation's economy. Why? Because insurance companies are quite content all too often to deny insurance, deny care or to rewrite the prescribed care just because it's going to save THEM money - and that causes disability or in some cases even death for some patients. I know, I'm one of these people - and now that I'm on Medicare and SSDI (where loss that plus loss of my normal income costs both the nation and my family dearly), we know what's really wrong with me because MEDICARE would pay for all the necessary testing after years of being denied either testing or even insurance because of my history.

Insurance companies MUST be written out of the equation. If left in, their leashes must be very short and profits carefully limited. Profits off of the very lives of others is a very evil and seductive form of greed.

Not only do we need to fairly and realistically examine the causes of poverty, but we need to properly assess what poverty IS. The existing guideline - the Federal Poverty Line - completely fails to do so. Telling someone what their budget SHOULD look like is a giant leap from looking at what budgets actually ARE LIKE and there's a lot of research showing that budgets often fail to meet "good budgeting guidelines (like the ideal that rent should be around 1/3 of income) at higher percentages as one gets into lower income brackets because basic expenses like food and housing take up larger and larger percentages of the family's or individual's income. I've seen one site that says it's common for working families to spend around half of their income on housing and I know that's what I spend as a disabled adult on SSDI.

If the poverty assessment - whether what it is and/or why it is - is off or wrong, then the help isn't going to be right or adequate. Also, without regard to why there's poverty, we MUST figure out a way to assist those who land in poverty that doesn't effectively penalize them for trying to get off of the assistance and back to self-sufficiency. Help shouldn't - and in all fairness, can't - be removed faster than the person can survive without it.

As one of those who muddle along in poverty, I can say this, it's something our nation must handle at some point. Failure to adequately assist people who are sick, disabled, hungry, and often on the edge of homelessness (if not already there) because of word games we as a nation play to keep numbers and costs down abuses the human rights of the poor who are desperate for help and who generally have no other way to reach their needs. Does our nation not understand that human rights include basic food, shelter and health care? These things are a part of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, just like any of the many other Human Rights we as a nation are so swift to be so outspoken about if another nation abuses them.

Health care is most definitely a human right. But based on what I've personally seen, this nation seems to have an issue with human rights that involve stuff health care or other things that can be called "personal responsibilities" or that can be related to the person's ability to pay or especially to anything that can be called poverty. Far too many are willing to play games like "but it's MY money" (never mind it was long ago paid to the government in taxes) or to be convinced that anyone and everyone who needs help is lazy and/or committing fraud - which is painfully far from the truth but between Moynihan, Reagan, the two Bush Presidents, et al, it's a popular misconception. Sure doesn't help that anything to help anything or anyone besides corporations and the rich is some terrible mix of unpopular and almost guaranteed political suicide.