Hopefully Senator Baucus and President Elect Obama will consider carefully all aspects of universal healthcare and who will ultimately bear the cost of a drastic policy change. I agree that we are too rich of a nation to allow over 40 million people to go without insurance however, to simply transfer the cost of this insurance to the taxpayer will put further strain on an already burdened system. Careful consideration must be given to developing policies that share both the cost and resposibility between the individual and the government. I am optimistic that a solution superior to the current state of affairs is both possible and within our grasp. I hope that the individuals responsible for crafting this policy will be pragmatic as well as idealistic.

HMO's were created some time ago as a different way of offerring health care and the original idea was to use the profits and put it back into the pockets of the members. That didn't happen. The executives ran away with the profits and money was made by cutting benefits for those who were sicker. Waiting lists were created. My own Mother-in-law was a member of Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, California. She and I were both diagnosed with cataracts in 2003. Within two weeks I had the surgery on both eyes in my little hospital where I work as an RN in Wisconsin. My Mother in law was 77, frail with high blood pressure and emphysema was on a waiting list for 9 months and her name came up, one week after she died. The only thing she enjoyed in her later years was reading, and this was not possible with her cataracts. I have endless stories. I work in Occupational Health. I take care of the hospital employees. My little hospital is "merging" with a giant teaching hospital in the area. Suddenly, we are quitting doing medical surveillance for employees exposed to chemotherapy drugs and ethylene oxide because there are no regulations requiring it. Only 38% of the hospitals in the nation monitor employee exposure, as there are only NIOSH recommendations. Ask me a question. I have been downsized twice as an older RN. They close the department and then open it up with lower paid younger "pool" nurses with little or no benefits. I have seen young women with breast cancer cry because the drugs they take to keep the cancer at bay are 800 dollars a month and they can barely feed their children. Even people with insurance are skipping meds to make them last longer. So sad.