2.Below is one of my colleague's views on the way to improve the state of healthcare in the United States.

One way to solve the health care crisis in U.S. is we need congress to pass law to enforce and require all For-Profit Heath Insurances to change to NON-PROFIT-HEALTH Insurances. This is the only way to eliminate the middle men who profit from medicine by denying BOTH PATIENTS' access to receive medical care and prescription medications and PHYSICIANS of proper reimbursement for their hard work and years of their investment in education and training (at least 12 years or more) and dedication (the rest of their professional life being "ON-CALL" for patients) in the health care profession. It is a well known fact that upper level executives and CEO of health insurances pocket themselves millions of dollars (from denying payments to patients and doctors) and they call it a "Bonus." We can use this bonus revenue to pay for needed medical attentions, surgeries to save lives, expenses of cancer therapies, educating patients to practice preventive medicine, vaccination programs, home-use medical equipments and many other medical necessities.

3.IS HEALTHCARE A RIGHT?
Below are 2 views, both written by physicians (neither by me).

By a Psychiatrist.
Let's assume, for the moment, that healthcare is a right. No country in the world has used its resources to provide universal health care to its citizens without rationing. Furthermore, the American National Character puts up with shortages and impositions a lot less well than other countries, because no other country in the world idolizes Bugs Bunny as we do. It's not Bugs, per se, it's what that character says about us.

So, we proceed with a Nationalized system. Any of you out there who are established have too few patients now? If you do, come out to any rural area and find yourself drowning. This is in our current system. Imagine how busy you'll be when anyone can see you.

Canadian physicians, British physicians, Aussie physicians, etc. make decent money. The problem is that their governments look upon them as cost centers, i.e., a necessary evil. What I've heard in Canada is that the docs migrate South when their billing allowances for the year are full up. This is the reason for their enormous backlog of cases.

In New Zealand, where I practiced for a year, and in Canada, there are also strikes. In the year I was in NZ, the residents went on strike right before I arrived, the Senior Consultants had to threaten strike action to get the government to increase salaries to stop the brain drain to Oz, the nurses threatened strike, the lab techs struck twice, the X ray techs struck, even the janitorial staff had labor problems (check back issues of the New Zealand Herald of 2007, available on the web, to check my stories). I visited Canada to go to the Shaw festival in 1999, 2000, and 2002. In EVERY year I went, MDs were striking in one of the provinces that year.

In short, there will be rationing and shortages if we go this way. One can also expect longer waiting times to use equipment (please don't go off on a tangent about what is a non-emergent MRI) if the use isn't imminently life saving, and longer waits for specialist referral, as well as a shortage of specialists. (The Capitol of NZ, Wellington, population 400,000---film and intellectual Capitol as well, as well as the home of one of NZ's major teaching hospitals---had no pediatric oncologists practicing there for some months. In addition, there are NO inpatient psychiatric beds for children under 12 on the whole North Island, population 2 million plus).

Now, if we decide that's the way to go, fine. But the "right" will need to be paid for, in a country with an enormous deficit. More MDs will need to be trained, especially as our population ages.

Think carefully, not reflexively.

Myself, I would reform Malpractice laws and bring back charity hospitals, while denying almost all care to illegals. But that's me.

By a Surgeon
#1 the constitution preamble is "...Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and posterity...", not "provide for the general welfare"

#2. Any "right" you have requires no one else to participate in order for you to exercise it. Speech, for example, requires no one else to listen, nor provide you a forum in which to speak. The right to keep and bear arms requires no one else to provide them for you, only that you are allowed to purchase them if you desire, and use them as you see fit, so long as you do not impinge on the rights of others (life, liberty, or property).

#3 If healthcare is a "right" then someone else would have to intervene (and be required to do so, without regard to compensation) in order to provide it, be it a doctor, nurse, phlebotomist, etc. If they are required to act on your behalf without compensation, then the law would effectively turn all "providers" (I hate that term) into indentured servants (or worse). I see no constitutional manner in which one group of people can be pressed into service for the benefit of others to provide access to their "rights" without impinging on the rights of the provider.

#4 speaking of constitutionality, I also do not see any constitutional means by which the government is allowed to determine the compensation for private enterprise (medicare), but that's off topic.

Mental health parity legislation to provide better coverage for 113 million Americans.
On the front page of its Metro section, the Washington Post (10/10, B1, Jenkins) reports, "An estimated 113 million Americans...will receive better insurance coverage for their mental health and substance abuse problems because of landmark legislation that for the first time requires mental and physical illnesses to be treated equally." The new law prohibits "companies from setting higher co-pays or deductibles for mental health and substance abuse treatment." The measure also prohibits "lowering benefit levels or restricting the number of outpatient therapy sessions or hospital treatment days." And, any plans that offer "out-of-network visits for the treatment of physical illnesses...will also have to offer identical out-of-network coverage for mental healthcare." According to experts, the new law "will be a significant expansion of services for the mentally ill." The Post notes, however, that there are "significant limitations" since "carriers that do not offer mental health treatment in their current plans will not be forced to begin doing so."
        ABC News (10/9, James) added on its website that the legislation's "success hung on a coalition of lawmakers who all had been touched by mental illness." In addition to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), "two powerful partners share in the legacy of the bill's passage: the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, (D-Minn.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)." Sen. Domenici was recently "diagnosed with frontotemporal lobar degeneration"