At this point, I don't know how you abolish it.

But I think if it had never been instituted, the free market would have helped keep medical costs down.

I think that is true of private insurers, as well. If we had never come to rely on insurance, never come to expect deep-pocketed employers to pick up that tab for us, etc., I think that medical care would be much more affordable.

As it is right now, medical care costs what it costs for many reasons. One of those reasons is because of the astronomical insurance costs physicians must pay just to be able to cover their own tushes. Check out the info here showing what OBGYN's pay in premiums just to be able to deliver babies. It states that in '04, it cost $270,000 in Dade County, FL. If an OBGYN had 270 pregnant patients, each of them would need to be charged $1,000 JUST to cover her Dr.'s malpractice insurance premiums! That's before the doctor even did a single procedure on the patient!

Hospitals and clinics must carry the overhead of the personnel involved with filing insurance claims. They have to have specialists dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. And those programs come with their own bureaucracies. In a thousand ways, the whole insurance scenario carries with it so many expenses that I think were insurance - government *or* private - stripped away, we'd see a dramatic decrease in what we'd need to pay out of pocket for hospitals and clinics to make a go of it.

CAN we get away from it at this point? I don't know how. And that's why I don't want us creating an even deeper obligation to this monster of a situation by going public option. Once we put our toe across the threshold, my gut tells me that within 20 years every one of us will have no choice but to use the public option. I think there is an agenda and that those who seek to institute the plans that are out there *today* ultimately want complete government take-over of the health care system, and this is just their first step.