It is true that care in almost all of our emergency rooms is some the best care in the world.

It is true that in almost ALL other sytems is rationed (subtlely or otherwise) to control costs, to varying extents. (In many cases: You simply CAN'T get certain treatments at by policy if you are outside of the protocols from the system. Care, medicines, treatment options are rationed. When your time is up, it's more or less subtle, but nature is going to run its course.) I'm not saying this as a right-wing scare tactic, it's true. To suggest otherwise is just as wrong as suggesting that nothing needs to be done to our system in the U.S.

In my opinion, the fundamental flaw in our system is that the insurerance system (private and public) provides HUGE inefficiencies because so few dollars to actually providing care (less that 20%). There are a lot of reasons why that has evolved, but that's what has be dealt with.

Have Government simply regulate the system won't solve the problem. Right now, the "standard" care rates allowed for a simple chest X-Ray allows on a few dollars for the image to be taken, read, and a report written. It's about what two or three Starbucks coffee's cost. That's the travesty, the goal of the "system" has little to do with "care" and more to do with cost control.

If you had a system where we pay insurance to cover $100 wemorth of costs -- and only a few dollars actually goes to provide that necessary care, you will have declining quality.

I don't have an easy answer. The current system is broken, but the solution isn't just "Universal Care" ....whatever that means in reality of the way it might become administered.

Our companies health care costs have gone-up over 34% each of the prior 3 years -- NO EXCUSE for that much increeased costs. Just gouging by the insurance companies. UNREGULATED, effectively! This year, inexplicably, we are facing almost no increase? They must have realized that they had reached the level of intolerablity.

At the same time, the rates they allow mean that fewer physicans are accepting their rates. The allowed rates and the payment terms (delays, etc.) are just ridiculous.

The system is broke.