== Interesting developments with Medicare july/2008 ==

It appears they passed the bill - [http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/national-medical-association-applauds-congress/story.aspx?guid={11CBF258-5B6C-43FA-9234-84A6BC6ED165}&dist=hppr marketwatch story]. 

[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113439.php]
[http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i7iE7avJJApCbSyOn9r_1py4RysgD91L7BJG0 Dueling ads pressure Congress on Medicare]
[http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/6583.html AMA's message]

It appears both Senators from Idaho appear to have voted against this measure. 
[http://crapo.senate.gov/] [http://craig.senate.gov/keyportal.cfm] [http://craig.senate.gov/releases/pr062708a.cfm Craig's press release.]

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[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-kirsch/why-not-single-payer_b_113089.html] "single payer" is a euphamism for socialist health care? If they are having trouble paying for who is on Medicare now, it will be much worse if everyone is on it. This is part of the reason they have long wait times and use any technicality to deny claims: it is a dishonest way to keep their buget balanced. No worse than the HMOs.

Then once they have control, they'll probably make paying for a good doctor on your own illegal. That or they'll do like medicare does now and drop anyone who pays for their own doctor or test or such. Another way to keep people from finding out their real condition and therefore requiring more expensive treatments.

For a while, they were dropping any doctor who took cash from *anyone*, not just Medicare patients. So for several years, anyone who didn't have medical insurance had one hell of a time finding any doctor who would take them, let alone a decent one. This is what happened to me. I was mostly working for temp agencies and when I did have a permanent position, I didn't work anywhere long enough to qualify for health insurance.

Of course, I think it would be more important to prevent permanent injury by policing those bigoted groups who try to destroy lives and murder people just because they don't believe in their "one true religion."

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-pollack/two-ms-patients-one-engli_b_114780.html comparison between the UK and US healthcare systems] Only looks at two people, so I wouldn't take too much stock in it. I have heard plenty of complaints about the UK system by people from the UK. [http://kyan.deviantart.com/journal/18906093/ like this].