Insurance companies are in it for profit. This means that they will always look for reasons to raise your premium and to deny your charges. With a cadre of attorneys and with their signature required for you to get medical bills paid, they have the power. Each time they deny a payment unfairly, it amounts to theft from you, except that you do not have the power to put them in jail for the theft. What you can do is whine and complain, ultimately sue for payment or complain to the state insurance board. No available recourse is adequate in my opinion.

So finding something new and better seems a good idea. But if the government gets in the business of denying care or regulating behavior patterns as a prerequisite for health care, you will hear some unfortunate stories from mistreated patients. Besides that if you do not pay for health coverage, will the government then tax you for the amount or perhaps give you penalties or even jail time?

When you demand that every citizen have a service, provided by private enterprise, and that each citizen pay for that service, then it seems to me it should be the responsibility of the government to assure that every individual has the means to pay. How could this be accomplished? Without a credit directly to each person for the needed amount I can not see this occurring.

It is a complicated issue because everybody has different needs. A young healthy person may pay 150 for insurance per month, while an older unhealthy person may pay 800 or 1,000 per month.

An insurance company which gets a guarantee that everybody must subscribe to their plan has even more incentive to raise prices. If they can skew the actuarial tables and limit their payouts they scoop even more profits. I just think it is a dangerous path, however noble it is to want everyone covered.

It seems to me that there might be some health care alternatives that could be considered. Imagine for a moment if there were specialized centers for specific sorts of ailments where lots of people could go through treatment programs efficiently at a low cost. This would be against the insurance company's interests because reducing their costs would reduce the premiums they could charge.

If the insurance companies set their prices based on a projected earnings of a certain percentage, then the higher the charges are for treatment, the higher the prices for insurance will be and the higher the insurance company profits will be.

One of the industries that is lobbying against the 'marriage' amendment act, is the insurance industry. If the GLBT community were to recognized under this amendment, the insurance companies would be paying out a heck of lot more. They don't want to pay out MORE, AS Philosopher says, they are in business to make money, and make money they do.

Insurance is actually hedging a bet. Both sides want to come out a winner, but only one side wins consistently. So we're willing to pay thousands a year to cover that one possible occurrence that could wipe out our savings.

There is another side of this equation. Those that are the health care givers. The salary of someone proficient in handling insurance claims is between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. And all they do is deal with the insurance claims.

Then there is the waiting period that doctors, medical practices and hospitals must wait for that money - this can present a huge cash issue. This gap has to be covered, either by stockholders or through loans. Loans is another expense to that business.

Then there is the additional general office expenses, for materials, office equipment, postage, and the like that exists only for the purpose of insurance collection.

DING, DING, DING - hear the price on health going up?

Now those who don't have insurance, or those who hedged their bet by including a very high deductible on their insurance, are suddenly unable to pay for even general health care.

Government run programs are not the answer. We need to force those companies who are providing us a service for our money, not only to fill the need, but to take responsibility for an ethical and social role in the lives of the communities who are supporting their business.

These companies need to devise better ways of dealing with health care professionals. They are literally driving the general practice doc out of business by the high cost of doing business with the insurance companies. As they raise their charges to cover the expense, we can no longer afford to see them, or worse, simply default on paying the bill.

Asking the government to take over because a business industry has failed to support those who butter their bread is another way of handing over a problem that we don't want to take the time or make the effort to correct.

I know there are other issues with health care that deal with those who are not working, the working poor and those who are unable to work. I think many of these issues could be amended in two ways.

If the government did it's real job to find out why there are so many "working poor", and why there are so many jobless. It could relieve much of that issue.

If the insurance industry created a more efficient way to deal with the health care industry, costs for both industries would diminish. With more funds available on both sides of the equation, doctors would be more willing to pro-rate, or charge according to means, or not charge for those who can't afford it.

And the insurance companies who would also be better off, could create programs to insure those who can not afford it.

THIS IS BUSINESS 101 people. Businesses are considered 'entities' by this government and being an entity, guidelines for their actions have been set forth. One of those guidelines is to have a social connection with their benefactors. The insurance industry, has not climbed on board, we need to find a way to make them.