i was reading about charlie crist's plan in florida to offer bare bones coverage to low income, in an effort to help lower health care costs for everyone else. He visited a hospital that provided $102 million in uncompensated care last year. He said that one of the biggest reasons poor people can't afford health care is because in Florida there's more than 50 mandates requiring coverage for things like acupuncture and bone marrow transplants.

To sum up part of his plan he said, "if you don't need pregnancy coverage, don't buy it."

My thing is, i know other people have come up with this idea and it seems like a good one. What do you guys think?

I know some of the left-leaning people on this board want some more constructive discussions, so let's see one.

Health Insurance is fundamentally flawed. It should be more like auto insurance, something you only use when it's too big to be shelling out cash. You don't use your insurance when you need an oil change or new tires or a tune-up. Likewise, you don't need to pull out your BC/BS card for a quick clinic visit to your primary care doctor for your annual physical, a cold, or that rash on your arm.

In 2001 I had emergency heart surgery. Some time after I got out I received 2 statements in the mail - one from the hospital itemizing the costs of everything that was done and one from the insurance showing how much they paid. The hospital bill was for $120,000. I was in the hospital for 3 days, only had one follow up visit with the surgeon's office a few weeks later and the only time I met the guy that actually cut me open was the night before my operation. All the bed side visits and the follow up were conducted by one of his assistants. During my 3 days in the hospital they billed me for $15,000 in medications and $200 for "mucus recovery wipes," which are tissues.

The statement I got from the insurance company showed that they only paid $5000 for EVERYTHING and I had to dish out $50 for a hospital visit co-pay.

This leads me to believe that the hospital is billing me on the high side to possibly make up for patients who can't afford to pay and that my high insurance premiums (about $12,000 a year at that time paid by my company and through my pay check deductions) are unnecessarily high. To me it looks like both the medical and insurance systems are in need of fixing.

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You need to start by looking at the Money Behind "Big Insurance".

Big Oil and Big Insurance run in the same circles.

What is my point ..... simply that getting any sort of Real and Huge Change made is going to be a Battle Royal when you start taking peoples $Billions$ away from them.

We could have changed the Health Care System 50 years ago and if we had put any effort into it, we could have several alternatives to Petroleum to fuel our lives.

Putting "Intelligent Alternative Plans Together" is no big deal ..... not getting Assassinated by Greedy and Powerful men once you have created that "Intelligent Alternate Plan" is a whole other thing.

People have Murdered, En Masse, over a whole lot less of a reason.

Powerful and Rich men LOVE staying Powerful and Rich.

Just needed to be "Cynical" for a moment.

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But my question is, how do we do that? is Crist's plan a good one, or is it flawed?

Post a link to his plan, I've been busy and haven't seen it.