So Harold, is your point that there should be no charges what so ever for healthcare?

Isn't "cost shifting" how hospitals pay for services provided to people who have no insurance and no other means of payment? In other words, individuals with insurance are already covering the cost of healthcare for those without insurance or money to pay.

Harold you wrote:

"It is my contention that a person in need of medical care should receive what he needs because he is a human being and deserves his fellow human beings' aid in providing those services. That would seem, to me, the ethical, moral, and Christian way to go about things."

This assumes that people are being denied healthcare in the U.S. Unless you have data to support that notion I don't think its reasonable to make the assertion nor does it advance the discussion.

Also let's not confuse healthcare providers with healthcare insurers. Though I will agree that greedy people exist in all professions.

I never confuse insurance with care and I would sooner that the discussion in Congress turn toward the system of care and making it universally available, equally, to all, and not the system of insurance. Insurance, in the American model, is not a successful way to control costs and provide full access.

If the bills continue, they will simply add profit to a morally bankrupt system. If we aim for better, unfettered, fully and universally accessible, high-quality care, we will achieve something close to it. If we aim only for "reform" of an insurance system as a means of brokering access to care, we will achieve that much baser goal.

If you believe that everyone in the US is provided the care needed without regard to income, social standing, age, or employment simply based on the fact that a person is in need, that no one in this country is bankrupted by medical costs, denied needed care, or given a limited choice of care due to an inability to pay directly, or for insurance, then you see no need for change and there is no discussion. We have that system of delivery and access and everything is just fine.

When people make decisions to limit themselves or others based on cost, we are faced with denial or exclusion. Neither is conducive to a healthy population. To believe that no one is denied or excluded, it is essential to believe that there are no economic considerations, financial impediments, or access limitations to health care services and the choice to forego care is made only for personal reasons.

For providers to reduce a sick or injured person to a means for profit is not merely evidence of greedy people in all professions, it's a systematic stripping of human dignity.

Your third paragraph Harold, I said none of that or anything like it. You didn't refute my point that people are not being denied healthcare. There is a difference between delivery and insurance. Medicare, and Tricare for the military are government insurance programs. The difference between government insurance and private sector for profit insurance is that while the private sector companies earn a profit, Medicare and Tricare spend endlessly and increase the National debt.

I will also define my terms for the sake of discussion: Healthcare delivery is what healthcare workers do to make you better.

Healthcare insurance is how you pay for healthcare delivery.

Congress would co-mingle them and confuse the issue to meet each Congress persons own agenda. Keep them separate, simplify the discussion. Fix those things that need to be fixed. That's not status quo. That's not "do nothing".

Which is worse? The endless debt, tax increase, service decrease cycle or figuring out how to regulate the private sector in a way that works.

I choose enforcing existing regulations, and promulgating those new regulations that will help reduce cost. Access to the system is not the problem. Paying for the services received is the problem. 

There's another part that no one is discussing and that is accountability. Until Congress is held accountable for doing its job and the private sector is held accountable for behaving in a civilized fashion and until each citizen assumes personal accountability..........nothing will change.

Congress will continue to develop programs that don't work, robber barons in the private sector will continue to steal when they can and many individuals will continue to expect the next bigger and better entitlement.

Hospitals are second in inefficiency only to the federal government. They also need to be accountable for their efficient day to day operational costs. For the most part they're not.

Human dignity is also stripped when there is no reason to contribute to society. 

I specifically cite insurance as our chosen means of access to services, that is who get's paid and, by extension, who gets offered services. I don't conflate it with the delivery of services by professionals. However, our system fails on both accounts.

And they fail for the reasons you cite: "National debt", "how you pay", "endless debt, tax increase", "individuals will continue to expect the next bigger and better entitlement" - everything for you, as for Congress, devolves to money and why should we pay for others? Care is not about money - it is about human dignity.

I always get a kick out of the embedded code in "personal accountability". Typical libertarian/ conservative speak has shifted this to mean that we are to do for ourselves and keep out of each other's way. In their Utopia, if each stands solidly on his own, there is no need for the dreaded "entitlements".

"We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained in Jefferson's time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live." (W. Wilson)

But, as I said before, there is a moral, ethical, and Christian way to go about things. In that mode, "personal accountability" means that we are accountable to and FOR each other as in the rhetorical "Am I my brother's keeper?"

As far as I'm concerned, how do we pay? We pay for each other. We don't need multiple insurers for this. We can find a single common pool. How do we minimize what we pay? We eliminate profit, pay only for the delivered services. We make our hospitals more efficient. We negotiate rates from the vantage of being a large, sinlge bloc of patients. We invest in better primary care and pay less to specialists. How do we stop "robber barons in the private sector"? Just do away with profit from human misery.

"second in inefficiency only to the federal government" - Your government can only be as good, as efficient, as accountable as you make it. "The government is us; we are the government, you and I." (T. Roosevelt)

Whereas the profit motive drives the private sector, "The object of government is the welfare of the people." (T. Roosevelt) It is our means of working for our common and collected interests. If we reduce the government, we reduce our own power. Rather than relegate the government to nudging the private sector on our behalf and hoping that the regulations (which, to date, are constantly and easily gamed), I'd sooner take the private sector profits and non-human interests out of the system altogether.

"What I am interested in is having the government of the United States more concerned about human rights than about property rights. Property is an instrument of humanity; humanity isn't an instrument of property." and "You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that have made social reform necessary." (W. Wilson)

There is never "no reason to contribute to society." If we abdicate our Constitutional power as "the People" in order to pursue our liberties as each individual, we weaken ourselves.

"Freedom to-day is something more than being let alone. The program of a government of freedom must in these days be positive, not negative merely." (W. Wilson)

So, you can try to "fix" what you view as separate broken pieces and disempower the People and I will work to supplant the current systems remembering that "You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that have made social reform necessary" and dispense with the systems of insurance guiding both access and delivery altogther.