Of people talking about the United States of America having a health care crisis. We have the very best health care in the world. What we have is a health insurance crisis because we have too much government regulation.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of mandated coverages that are DIFFERENT FOR EVERY STATE.

If you wanted to, you could not open a health insurance company and go around to every business in Fort Bend and say, “I am offering health insurance plans, but if you have a bunch of people with pre-existing conditions then I won’t write your company a policy.’

When I say pre-existing, I am talking about every conceivable ailment out there. When I was in high school, the seismic data processing company I worked for had a health insurance policy. My co-worker’s wife got pregnant but maternity was not covered.

Today, there is not any “full-service” health insurance plans that don’t cover maternity. They call this spreading the risk. So, if I wanted to offer my employees a health plan and told them in advance “our policy doesn’t cover maternity” and have a low-cost health plan, I could not do that because there is no such plan allowed.

By the way, many of the HMO, PPO, group plans, etc. let you go to the doctor for $20 or $30 office visits. What is up with that? Twenty-five years ago when I went to the doctor without insurance it was at least $45 to $65. Today, that same office visit must be $100 to $140. So who pays the difference? Is it the insurance company or is it a combination of doctor discounting and insurance?

Then, when I go to the pharmacy I get a prescription filled for the same $20 to $30. Again, who is making up the difference? And all you hear about is how a certain segment of our population can’t afford prescription drugs and may have to resort to eating dog food or getting their drugs.

Next time you sit down to watch TV, count the number of drug commercials you see in one hour. Every channel that has programming for our demographic will have at least four per hour. Obviously people can afford prescription drugs or the companies would not be producing and paying for these commercials.

If each state can regulate what health policies can cover, why can’t they regulate what they CAN’T or don’t cover. So, our HMOs, etc. don’t have to cover maternity, flu, headache, HIV or even a broken bone. Maybe it would basically cover evasive (surgical) procedures and hospitalization. Then you can buy your own OPTIONAL policy similar to Aflac to cover any specified ailments not in your plan.

I just get sick of politicians saying we need to fix health care. What has the over powerful federal government EVER fixed? They say “forty million people don’t have health insurance.” Well, maybe some of them don’t want it and those that don’t, go to an emergency room and get the same care I would get. The national media and pinhead politicians say we need to fix health care since we have 40 million uninsured? They want to do this by making everyone have (or get free) health coverage (insurance).