The HealthCare Reform Issue has mainly been addressed by self interest groups. As a consumer I have never been shown the pricelist for CAT Scans provided ie Cat Scans go for $$. When I have blood work done the price list for the tests run have never been shown to me before I purchase. When I have a mamogram a price list is not issued where I may shop to get the best for my money or even the best results from testing and follow up from my physician. I only mention this because when you usually buy a car you get a list price plus all the perks with additional prices. Full disclosure is provided. As a nurse, when a doctor orders a procedure or a blood test or any diagnostics to help them make a diagnosis for their patients/consumer, they are not issued a price list on available tests they can order. They have received education to make those decisions and those are the methods to help aid them in their diagnosis. What the American people have lost sight is they too have as much a responsiblity to find out what the price list is that is available to them through their customer service prior to any hospitilizations and/or treatments or procedures. They pay for their insurances through their companies. If they have a big company they usually have somebody who is educated in a Human Resource capacity to make an overall decision and eventually negotioate a contract with the Insurance Companies shopping for their business and each of those is different depending on the negotitions. The full disclosure should be known at that time if the employers are paying the majority and the employee is paying the minority of their own insurance. Also the Employees have an obligation to their families to make sure they go to their well visits and take the information their doctors give them. Only 20 minutes is usually available or alotted in educating patients/consumers on what they can actively do to take care of themselves and their families. We have an obesity issue in this country which ultimately is going to lead to expensive care. We have unemployment, we have people going to bed without decent food in their bellies-including Children and our Elderly. President Obama has opened up a venue so that we can come to the table with our concerns. It is our responsibility to come up with a plan and not bicker amoungst ourselves who is responsible. It seems to me that the people who just wanted got just that. Now it is the ones who didn't know what they needed to start paying attention to what is going on. We need to start taking care of our families ie., diet, nutrition, sleep and spending time with them. That will help many of the problems we have that the Pharmaceutical companies are making TONS of money on. Secondly, before we sign we should take the time to find out what the costs are. Things are sometimes too vague and confusing and we have the time to check out things. Lastly, the insurance companies are the ones who have followed medicare guidelines for years and have gone along with the suggestions. Sometimes with supervision or the lack of remains to be proven. But one thing is for sure, if we take better care of ourselves and families it will make it easier to make these choices. We should have Healthcare for ALL despite the dis-ease which has spread across our Country. But sometimes we could just help ourselves too and listen to our doctors who have been battling this themselves for years, and politely have been telling you what you need to do to take better care of yourselves. It comes down to choices of basic needs...not wants.

I am adamantly OPPOSED to the H.R. 3200 Healthcare Bill. The president of the AMA certainly does not represent me and my opinions. Government-run, socialized healthcare would permanently RUIN America's healthcare system. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. I am a psychiatrist in private practice in Tupelo, Mississippi. I have been working in Tupelo for the past 16 years and I have one licensed counselor and 4 employees. The other 6 psychiatrists in town have so many patients in their practices that none have accepted new patients in over a year.

TERRIBLE ASPECTS OF THIS BILL
(partial listing):

1. The GOVT will audit the books of ALL employers that self insure.
2. ALL treatments/benefits will be DECIDED by a Govt Committee!
3. All healthcare will be rationed! (except for the President and other govt officials, I'm sure)
4. The "Health Choices Commissioner" will choose your benefits for you (you will have no choice in your benefits).
5. These healthcare "benefits" will be uniform and automatically given to all illegal immigrants.
6. The Govt will have Real-Time access to your individual bank accounts. Everyone will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
7. A "healthcare exchange" will bring private healthcare plans under GOVERNMENT CONTROL.
8. The govt will MANDATE all the benefit packages for private healthcare plans.
9. The govt. rations the healthcare based on the cost benefits to the govt.
10. The govt will use groups like ACORN to to sign up individuals for the healthcare.
11. The govt will DICTATE wages doctors allowed to make. It souns like all physicians will paid the same! ("Service categories established under this paragraph(section 1121, pg 241) shall apply without regard to the specialty of the physician furnishing the service")
12. The govt will set the value of the physician's time, professional judgment, methods.
13.All employers MUST enroll into the public option plan. They have no choice and neither do the employees.
14. Employees MUST pay premiums for every employee, even part time ones, as well as their families.
15. A 6% "TAX" will be levied on ALL PAYROLL if full, public healthcare benefits are not provided for all employees if your total payroll is between $250000 and $400000 AND 8% "tax" if your payroll is greater than $400000.
16. All NONRESIDENT ALIENS are exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)
17. All employees of the healthcare Admin will have complete access to ALL your personal financial, bank and investment information.
18. The govt will limit and REDUCE physician services for Medicaid recipients(SECTION 1121,pg 239).
19. The govt will have "prohibitions" on how much doctors can make and own (pg 317, line 13-20).
20. The govt will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals(pg 351, section 1177).
EDITORIAL: I believe EUTHANASIA will be strongly encouraged with this SOCIALIZED MEDICINE GOVERNMENT-RUN PROGRAM).
21. Govt will MANDATE "advance care planning consultations" for every individual where we will be instructed on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in order to not be a "burden" on the healthcare budget. The "consultations" will be required more frequently as an individual's condition worsens.
22. Funding for this SOCIALIZED MEDICINE will be mostly through massive Medicare budget CUTS and through INCREASED TAXES on "high income individuals" (defined as those who make over $350,000/yr but of course this arbitrary number can be easily lowered when more funding is needed).

PLEASE IMMEDIATELY MAKE YOUR VOICE BE HEARD TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND YOUR PATIENTS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!! The congress will be voting on this in mid- September according to what I am reading.

due to limitations of space, I implore anyone interested to read the comprehensive essay opposed to Obama-care at www.afcm.org. That is, the site of Americans for Freedom of Choice in Medicine. It is the most comprensive and astute rendition of everything that comes to mind regarding the pitfalls of socialized medicine or anything that looks remotely like it or evolves into it. An absolute must read.

I have been a psychiatrist for 45 years. I have seen and lived with the system that we have now and the suffering that it has caused our citizens, with so many that can't get medical care at all and so many others that are denied care by their insurance companies. Insurance companies only care about profit. The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 45.7 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

Those of us who are members of the Physicians for a National Health Program endorse a fundamental change in America's health care - the creation of a comprehensive National Health Insurance (NHI) Program. Such a program - which in essence would be an expanded and improved version of Medicare - would cover every American for all necessary medical care.

We need to tell President Obama and Congress that single-payer health reform is the only practicable way to achieve his stated goal of universal, comprehensive coverage at an affordable price.

Only single payer, by redirecting the vast sums wasted annually on bureaucracy and paperwork back into care, can assure high-quality coverage for everyone with no net increase in U.S. health spending. Only single payer can rein in costs.

Lesser reforms, with or without a “public option,” won’t fix our broken system.

Don't bother to "dump" the AMA. That's like trying to reform the Republican party to restore its free-market, limited government roots. We will need a new organization to represent non-government physicians and do the best we can to establish and preserve a second tier of US medicine that operates like private schools do compared to public schools.

I bailed out of the AMA years ago as they did nothing beneficial for my specialty of Anesthesiology. Now they are endorsing the socialization of medicine as proposed by BO???? No doctor should belong to the AMA unless they want to be a government employee.

The AMA does not speak for the majority of US physicians. But we as physicians have let them speak for us by default.

How many physicians are already planning early retirement?

Obama is using the old totalitarian tactic referred to as `The big Lie`-you proclaim a blatant untruth so loudly and so long everyone starts to believe it. By no stretch of the imagination would a government-run `option` ever compete fairly in the marketplace with other health insurance companies. The government has deep pockets(OUR pockets,by the way)-no private ins co. can match its resources. And besides that,the Obamacare bill expressly states that the government will DICTATE to the health ins companies what must specifically be offered as an `equal` alternative to their own plan! Many of the leftwing dems in Congess are saying openly that their goal is to put private ins co`s out of business and ultimately get the single payer system which the American people is telling them at every turn they DO NOT WANT. Ms. Landrum is right when she says that we should be answerable to our pts.But how in the world could adding 30 layers of wasteful government bureaucracy between you and your doctor ever make that better?

as an attorrney there should be malpractice reform as follows the fee cap should be 30%
2. a certificate of merit from 2 physicians in the same medical specialty should be required to file the suit
3 punitive damages that are awarded should be placed in a special fund to care for the un/underinsured that way the public will be aided out of medical mistakes
if you want to see even more health care reform visit ' the universal individualized medicine plan' at www.insurancetomorrow.org. and see a plan that would
1 cover everyone and every procedure and treatment that YOU and YOUR DOCTOR feel required without govrnment / or health insurance industry interference
2 drug and research reform under this proposal the drug companies patent life on a drug will extended to 35 years and with lower costs to the patients and without the worry of inferior generic drugs made in china or elsewhwere then shipped back here
3 reduced billing and paperwork for the doctors and patients decreasing a doctors office overhead by as much as 20% can you imagine a doctor will have more time to spend with his patient

there is much more plus away to pay for it without breaking the bank

Becky, if you really want healthcare that the government does not already have fingers in the pie, see a Veterinarian. Have you heard a word about limiting law suits......NO!! Is that not amazing since you can track the cost of healthcare to the cost of junk lawsuits. Well not really since most of the DC rats are Lawyers.