hifi-tek wrote:

The biggest problem with health insurance in general, is that the
poorest people, who can least afford it, are the very ones who need
it the most. Because of ignorance, lifestyle choices, attitude, etc.
the poorest sector of the population is the one you most see
frequenting the ER departments at hospitals.

Certainly those factors apply, but the other factor you overlooked is
that they are just, well, poor. -Somebody- has to ask if "you want fries
with that" or make the beds at the Holiday Inn -- and usually those jobs
don't come with a good health care program. It's just a fact of our
society; we can't -all- be highly paid, PhD rocket scientists --
somebody has to shovel the ****.

There is no solution to this dilemma except to have the upper middle
class and the rich help subsidize health care for the poor.

....and we ARE subsidizing health care for the poor. Why do you think we
keep hearing about the twenty dollar Band-Aid(tm)? We complain when we
find that on our bill, but it's really part of the 'hidden' subsidy.

A BIG reason health care is so expensive is that as more and more people
get 'downsized' or lose their well-paying American manufacturing job to
Mr. Wong in China, the number of people requiring to be subsidized just
keeps growing and growing.

As a society, we have two choices: when they come to the ER, we can
provide (subsidized) treatment or refuse treatment and put them out on
the curb to die. Fortunately (and so far), we have chosen the former.