1605 disabled veteran cannot get adequate care due to lack nurses, Dr.s, facilities and no VA Hospital in the State. We use Tripler Army Hospital sometimes. Tripler is also over burdened however the Commander should be given a medal and large basket of thank you.Tripler is the best facility in all my 40 years of Hospital care.

Unfortunately, CANCER, is not prejudice or biased. It will infect the most sickly to the healthiest individual: Old, young, men and women. I am a 2.6 yr Breast Cancer Survivor. Cancer of a rare form, to boot. Never did it enter my mind that the lump I had found in my left breast, would be Cancerous. ( Oh, the mammogram I had done just a month before, missed it). Fortunately, I DID have excellent Medical Insurance. Should I have NOT had any medical coverage, I would have NOT accepted any treatment. My reasoning is that I would have not... (more)

The cost to get basic care and pay for a place to stay is out of reach for the everyday working american. It comes do to being homeless with health care or have a home and do not have healthcare.

Health care is as important to people as our security, our roads, our schools, etc. When a catastrofic illness wipes out a family's resourses, the family is wiped out, too. My personal story is my sister, who is a single mother working incredibly hard to support her family. So hard that she neglects her own health and suffers a devastating stroke. She had health care but the costs she had to pay wiped out all of her savings. She was no longer able to do her job and had no savings to fall back on. Ordinary Americans who work hard and support... (more)

I know so many people that don't have health insurance. Most of them wait until they have a health crisis to go to the hospital. None of them get check ups or preventative care. In the end, it will cost all of us. Europe & the UK have healthcare, and we should, too.

Too many providers out there are hell-bent on self-enrichment, never mind the patient. First principal of oath to do no harm is ignored more often than not and has a devastating effect on patient as well as the public cost of health care. Instead of re-inventing health care in order to satisfy American pride, we need to emulate the best practices pioneered and proven over many years by kindred democracies in Europe and elsewhere, with far superior outcomes and manifestly drastically lower cost. Every one is covered and citizen... (more)

I am an oncologist in private practice. I have seen many patients with late cancer diagnosis due to the lack of health insurance. I also frequently witness redundancy of tests and missing medical information from other health care professionals regarding mutual patients. Privacy act does increases difficulty sharing health informations and medical malpractice risk certainly add to the cost. There is a need for health care reform in order to control escalating cost and to make it available to all.

I have many complicated health issues and I am fortunate enough to have Tricare insurance. My husband is an officer is the Coast Guard and this has saved our family from financial disaster. In 2004, at the age of 28, I experienced a severe stroke. After an ambulance ride and several hours in the ER, I was admitted to intensive care. After a week stay at the hospital I was moved to a rehabilitation hospital for physical and occupational therapy. The hospital stays added up to several hundred thousand dollars and I know without Tricare, we... (more)

My husband had two heart attacks and surgeries. Now we cannot stop working because no one will insure him for medical if we have to start over without our employer coverage. This seems very unfair and cruel. We paid into health insurance all our lives and hardly ever used it. Now we need it but are stuck and cannot retire. Medicare is tough because doctors won't treat Medicare patients often, so lots of insurers don't want to cover you except for drug coverage. So we just have to keep working until we die. WE can't afford to pay the... (more)

I am very health conscious and at age 28 represented the United States of America at the Olympic Games. For the decade I competed on the US team health insurance and catastophic injury coverage was provided at a "reasonable price." One season, I had an injury while in France, the hospital visit, surgery and subsequent bills were never covered as it was (surpirise)- "not within the US borders." All buried deep in the fine print on the policy. As an athlete with committment to excellence yet little money, I paid all my... (more)

We hear about them, read about them, and often see them on TV, and occassionally on the streets. All of us need affordable care.

My husband would still be alive today if he had had the proper health care providers, and not just passed on from one provider to the next, just to line each other's pockets for their own luxurious retirement.

I've noticed over the past several years that the quality of employer-provided coverage has eroded, likely due to the escalating cost of coverage. Upon opening my own business back in 2001, I purchased my own coverage. But it became progressively more expensive, and with higher deductibles, less choice, and fewer benefits. I have been extraordinarily healthy all my life, and then in 2007 I was suddenly stricken with a DVT and pulmonary embolism. I wasn't prepared for the financial hardship brought on just to meet my deductibles; I can't... (more)

I have stayed legally married to a man I have not lived with for 4 years because I am still covered under his excellent health insurance plan which includes choice of any doctor with low deductible, vision, drug and dental. If I could even get this plan on my own, it would be far too expensive for me.

I just got out of the hospital on May 7, after an 8 day stay. No operations, just 2 x-rays and 3 scans. The bill came to just under 25,000. The cost is utterly absurd and it's a disgrace to this country that health care expense is so totally out of control.

My husband and I are both unemployed and don't know how much longer we can keep paying over $600 per month for minimal coverage with no drug benefit. Please don't believe the insurance companies when they try to tell you that the President's plan will cost more money!

In February, 2008 I was admitted to Helse Bergen Hospital in Bergen, Norway after suffering a heart attack on an incoming plane while on a trip to work on an Earthquake Location program I wrote at the University of Bergen. Two Doctors on the helicopter that picked me up (in 10 minutes) treated me in flight and transfered me to the hospital were I was placed in intensive care for 2 weeks. During this time, I underwent catherization to placed 11 stents in one coronary artery, which improved my condition to where I was able to travel... (more)

I have been paying my own health ins over $300 a month for years now. I rarely use it, thank goodness but feel I must have it as a single older working woman. Please support the Obama health plan

I'm 49 and out of work, and because of pre-existing conditions, I am unable to get affordable health insurance. To keep the health insurance I had from my last job, under COBRA, would have cost me $1200 a month. Hardly affordable. I am currently living off of savings, and I have a mortgage. I am one accident or one illness away from financial ruin. I know I am one of many. I have to wonder what kind of government it is that allows health insurers to fleece its citizens in the way that it has. I have to wonder if enough members of Congress can... (more)

My husband has Hep C and cirrohsis and is being evaluated for a liver transplant. He got the Hep C back in 1980 from transfusions he received after being seriously injured in an auto accident caused by an underage drunk driver. In 2000 he was diagnosed with Hep C and cirrohsis. In 2005 he had to stop working due to his debillitating illness. He lost his health care coverage that he had through his employer and we had to pay $1000.00 a month for Cobra during the year it took me to find a job with health benefits so that he could keep seeing his... (more)