wrote in message
oups.com...
The last I checked hospitals HAVE to
service people (by law) no matter what their ability to pay.

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Yes, and those highly inflated "emergency room" costs eventually become
bad debt.

There's a healthcare practioner in town who shattered his arm, and needed
several surgeries to correct it. Medical bills stand at $30k. Fortunately
for the hospital, he can afford it and will pay his bill.

Why doesn't he carry insurance? Essentially, because he's a tightwad. He's
severely overweight, and didn't want to pay the astronomical premiums that
medically underwritten individual health plans were charging. But he's
counted among the "uninsured"!

There's a simple solution that would have helped this guy: Association
Health Plans (AHP's)...which are now before Congress with the name "Small
Business Health and Fairness Act". The SBHFA would have allowed him to join
a group plan negotiated by the American Dental Association on a national
level. His premiums would have been more reasonable, and he would have been
insured.

Bush favors the bill, and the House passed it on the first go-around in
March 2003. It then sat in a Senate review committee and never came out of
committee with a recommendation. It just died. It's alive again, and will
hopefully pass this time:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/app...506070327/1046

Senators from states that already have cheap insurance premiums, and
senators from states with a lot of insurance company headquarters (hint,
hint...ahem...Massachusetts) strongly oppose the bill. Unions oppose the
bill, because they already *have* legislation to give them these rights. So
do corporations and government employees.

All groups in opposition to the bill know that as small business premiums go
down, their premiums will likely go up. That's why they're so opposed to
it. However, I've read that 63% of people work for small businesses. They
should get the same advantages currently available to corporations,
government employees, and labor unions.