Ever since my appendectomy, I've become more and more concerned with the health care in the United States. We got an accounting of the bill for 16-17 hour stay in the hospital which included an ambulance transfer from Bremen to Carrollton, a CT scan, lots of drugs, and a surgery. It came up to around S17,000. With insurance, my family still has to pay a rather large amount.

The thing is that there are tons of people in the United states without insurance who will be injured or struck with a sudden illness, and they have to pay the full cost of the health care they received. I must say, my own family would not have been able to the full cost of my appendectomy. There too many families who also would not be able to cover the full cost. 62% of those who filed for bankruptcy in 2007 felt that medical debt contributed to them filing. Here's another thing though, 78% of those people had insurance.

In my opinion, the costs of health care have grown out of control. Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies decide what they are going to charge for what. They are businesses, and they want to make money. Insurance companies are take advantage of this and will frequently refuse claims for nonsensical reasons.

I'm personally a fan of the single payer idea which is that the government basically pays for everything. This is pretty impractical though (where's the money come from?). What I'm trying to say is that we need a public health care option at least because the cost of health care is out of control. People need to not be afraid to get treatment for any issues they might have because they are concerned about the cost of the treatment. The cost of health care has cause too many problems which we are paying for right now.

So... yeah. I'm done now. I've nothing else to say at this moment about the subject. Give me your opinions, your thoughts.

Here are some links. Please educate yourself and others on this topic.
[link] "Health Care Reform FAQ" - basically what different groups feel they should do about the health care issue
[link] "Health Care Reform: An Online Guide" - essentially tons of really useful links to columnists, blogs, government sites, new sites, academic sites, think tanks, and other informative links