I would be glad to try and look up the closest places for them.
As for the changes hurting my business, not a chance. It will more then likely help it. Back during Clinton's term I knew the left would sooner or later get around to screwing up healthcare so made changes to my business to deal with it. I stopped accepting Medicare / Medicaid back then and stopped accepting insurance companies several years ago. My business relies on the people who pay cash from their own pocket for items that the healthcare plans have denied them and hospitals, nursing homes, department stores, etc, and business is not bad even in this economy. Could be better but we are hanging in.
What I worry about it hurting if the healthcare of myself and my family something that is more important to me then money.
Yes they do try to keep them quite so that people are made to think they have to pay. There is a only one group I know of that has an almost impossible task getting free healthcare and while I do not mean to sound racist, it is young white males. If you are older, female, or another race there is help out there but you have to really dig for it sometimes.
OK now for a few facts, the piece Hobbes linked was about a state run healthcare plan denying treatment to patients, which is why I posted "Yep the joys of a government run healthcare system."
Medicare has a long history of denying a higher percentage of claims then any of the major insurance companies. They are trying to improve on this.
Our system is the most expensive because we demand more from it then anyone else in the world while suing everyone if we do not get it. In most countries people that we spends millions trying to save are just allowed to die. Not political BS, FACT. One reason our infant mortality rate is higher then most countries. We count our births differently and many that we count as born are counted as stillborn in other countries. This helps slant the figures on our healthcare are there are many other examples of this kind of thing.
Yes Canadians are coming to the US for normal procedures. Why? Because even though Canada does pay it's doctors well, many leave and come to the US where they can practice better medicine and even though Canada does pay for much of their training, medical techs leave and come to the US too. This means there is a shortage in many parts of Canada of people to run the test we all take for granted. I know for a fact you can wait many months for test that we get in just a couple of weeks. Canada can also not afford much of the testing equipment found in almost every decent hospital in this country. They have some of it but not enough to cover the number of patients they have to treat.
In short, yes our system has flaws but I would still rather have it for myself and my family then in other I have dealt with or know of.
And for the record, 20 or so years ago I had to use a free clinic too and got all the help I needed.
Seriously if not for the people Medicare / Medicaid denied I would have been out of business years ago. They tend to deny the things that could help someone at a reasonable cost while gladly paying for overpriced junk and when they do pay for a good, needed item, they pay way to much. When we accepted Medicare it was easier for us to sell someone a $5000 electric wheelchair then the $1500 mobility scooter that was really all they needed or wanted. A lightweight wheelchair that we sell for $300, Medicare stretched the payments out over a year and paid over twice as much. And they are the ones that set the price, not us. If as a Medicare patient you needed a wheelchair and Medicare paid for it, if you should get better to where you only needed a walker you were SOL for years. Medicare would pay for a new wheelchair if yours was damaged too bad but they will not pay for a much cheaper walker.
