I am on page 72, and so far I like it better than the house bill. But the problem still remains. The bill seems to totally misdiagnose or ignore the disease in our health care system, it's not that the problem is the inaccessibility to care, the REAL problem is that there is a general shortage of doctors. According to CNN there is 1 doctor for every 416 americans. The average salary is around $300,000 for a physician according to hypertext books 2006 statistics. These all point to supply and demand issues, not inaccessibility. Inaccessibility is just a symptom of the underlying cause. I think the government ought to ask itself why the costs are so high.

It's like they're giving a cancer patient aspirin - it might make people feel better, but underneath the surface, the condition will get worse - costs will continue to rise - only they'll be subsidized by government debt so we won't know about it until the money runs out or runs up.

The government ought to look at how the costs are rising so quickly, and I think a lot of it has to do with the excessive benefits in Medicare, a shortage of doctors, and discouraged student population. Either the standards for medicare are too high or the costs incurred during medical school are too much or both. Also, they might want to look at regulations in the industry and evaluate the effect it has on costs - and not to mention legal liabilities. If we could allow the patient to determine the amount of risk he or she wishes to incur during an operation or procedure, the patient should have the right. I think it would relieve a huge burdon off the practitioner if liabilities were contracted before the operation.

At any rate, I think inflation in health care can be most attributable to the fact that government employees have recieved benefits in excess to the good they provide to the general society - I imagine if their pay was commenserate with the goods they provide to society on average they ought to recieve a negative wage.