Obama's Health Care plan. Is it a stepping stone to H.R 676, or a road to nowhere?

So does that effectively prohibit one from using private insurance to speed access to a necessary (but non emergent) procedure such as joint replacement, repair of torn ligaments, gall bladder removal, etc?

There is no way to speed access to care by having more money than someone else. All are seen as equal.

So does that effectively prohibit one from using private insurance to speed access to a necessary (but non emergent) procedure such as joint replacement, repair of torn ligaments, gall bladder removal, etc?

If private insurance is used only for elective procedures (cosmetic, eye refraction, etc.), isn't it cost prohibitive? I can't imagine anyone purchasing private insurance unless they plan to have an elective procedure done, which, it seems, would make the cost of such coverage very expensive.

When I lived under a UHC system in Europe, I paid for a private policy as a supplement so I could have a private doctor. It was approximately 30-45 us dollars for 6 mos of coverage. But as Bluehair mentioned anything that was payable under UHC was covered there and incidentals like a private room, and my visits with him instead of the UHC doc was covered by the private insurance. Much more reasonable than what we pay here.

I'm assuming you are speaking of Austria? Looks like a good system, but I don't think our congress would even give it a second look after a five minute review of the demographics.

Of course it's important to point out that it's very expensive (social programs alone take over 30% of every worker's paycheck), and compulsory (everyone who works must pay).

I'm not saying that's wrong one way or another, but that method won't go over well here; we already don't force millions of our lowest wage earners to pay taxes, so to match this program would require that we start taking a chunk of EVERYone's pay for healthcare.

Additionally, Austria has a population about the same as NYC...not sure how you can translate that model to a population that is over 300 million, and has a substantially LARGER percentage of minorities than Australia. and a substantially LARGER percentage of immigrants.

I propose that if we cut back our migration rate to match Austria (that would be about a 75% reduction in immigration), then if we somehow could change our minority percentage to less than 10% of the population, and required every worker, from the fry-guy at McD's to the CEO at Microsoft to pay out 7% of their income just for health insurance...then it might insure more people (this is not elitism, it's about apples-to-apples comparisons). Additionally, I'm interested in seeing how their negative rate of natural increase will affect their ability to insure themselves in the next generation.

Thanks.