My biggest fear is two-fold:
1. That dental care is not addressed. I have had to have many teeth pulled because they rotted away – I could not afford my 50% co-pay for major dental work. I currently have 3 broken teeth that are very embarrassing but being a single mom raising my granddaughter alone there is no way that I can afford $700 per tooth.
2. Co-pays for medical treatment are not lowered. I have had to declare bankrupcy twice do to medical bills. I have never had a credit bill on my bankruptcy. AND I had what is considered good insurance. People today who think that our medical system is fine just the way it is have not had chronic and expensive illness. may God bless them that they never have to go through what my family and many others have gone through.

For those who are frightened about the current bill that is being discussed please go to http://www.factcheck.org and find an independent analysis of what our politicians are doing. It is primarily funded by the Brandenburg Foundation and the guy who started it is a Conservative Republican.

Cris is right in saying that there are sometimes free clinics or community health centers where you can go. It’s just hard to know what might be in your area. Ask at the Catholic diocese offices –the most local part of their heirarchy. Sometimes heirarchy does come in handy. They should know if there are any Catholic clinics around. Please keep asking until you find help. I’m so sorry you’re being left on your own this way in America. I hope this will soon change. BUt your situation sounds seriuos enough you need to not wait.
Best of luck to you, MOnique.

1. This says the healthy get to live and the sick and elderly will die.

If you think nationalizing healthcare will make you better and other people…it WON”T. It will make longer lines, uneducated healthcare workers taking care of you and your loved ones and significantly slow down cures for diseases such as cancer, alzheimers, BREAST CANCER, etc.

There will be a RATION for treatments. This means if you, your family, your children are sick….the government will determine how worthy they are to have the treatment….and it won’t be fast service.

Good luck and bye bye America. There is a reason, CUBA, ENGLAND, CANADA (all of the already nationalized healthcare countries) come to the U.S. for treatment and proceedures.

I am wondering if you have consider folks that have mental diseases, such as schizophrenia. My dad suffers from schizophrenia and will not accept help from others and chooses to be homeless. Fortunately he gets medical care from the VA (which is better then no care) but he certainly would not take part in a government voucher program, because he believes the government is out to get him and control him. I am sure this is an issue for many American’s out there.

Another is issue is taxing peoples food. I am all for eating healthy and we do everything we can in our family to eat healthy. However eating healthier does cost more, and for families that are already struggling and for single moms who need quick meals because they are working 2 jobs and don’t have time to cook a healthy meal they could be impacted. For our family our food bill went up more then I care to think about when my son was diagonsed with Celiac disease (an auto-immune disease where your body tries to attack any gluten in your system but it attacks your digestive track instead). Celiac disease can cause many different diseases and because our doctors don’t consider it first and run the simple blood test to rule it out, many people suffer from all kinds of illnesses and unnecessary medical cost. So instead of taxing peoples foods look at ways to make health care less expensive by educating doctors and making some kind of incentive for them to get to the bottom of someone health problem accurately and quickly. Lets face it sick people mean more money for doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors tend to always want to prescribe a drug to fix the problem which is expensive. Well for instance with Celiac disease there is no drug, just a life style change and the whole family is healthier because of it. I no longer suffer from joint pain, and sinus problems, so called stomache viruses, etc… my kids rarely get sick, and the list goes on and on with the illnesses we do not deal with. Celiac Disease is the most common genetic disorder, however 97% of the people who have it are undiagnosed and few people know about it. These undiagnosed people are more likely to get certain types of cancer and Type 1 diabetes, depression, thyroid issues, IBS, etc…. If you tax for instance foods with more then 4 grams of sugar, does that mean you are going to tax the yogurt I buy and the crasins, and other fruits, etc., just to name a few things which a recommended serving has more then 4 grams of sugar. Now can we put incentives in for companies to remove artifical sweetners, and MSG and High Frutose Corn Syrup and other equally bad items that are in many of our foods? I am all for making foods and drinks healthier, but taxing the folks who buy them I am not convinced that is the answer.

As a small business owner if Obama’s current plan goes through we will be put out of business. There is no way we can afford to buy insurance for our employees although we would like to. As it is we can barely afford payroll taxes, workers comp, etc..

As I said I think your idea has a lot of great things, but there are more things to consider.

Warmest Regards,

Malinda Hall