THANK GOD for PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE

[Ban my account ffs!]

Bingo.

I'd rather have a bureaucrat I can vote out of office than have some profit-seeking selfish pig blowhard in an office somewhere trying to kill people for a living in order to increase his margin.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I'd rather have a bureaucrat I can vote out of office

Those aren't the type of bureaucrats that would be running the system.

Ultimately, they would be more accountable to the people.  

But let's look at the issue here.. it is often argued that government provided healthcare increases bureaucracy and wait times, and yet here is a great example of private health insurance companies deciding that someone no longer has asthma despite never having been in contact with the doctor about it.

If anything, we need to remove all incentives and benefits to doctors provided by drug companies to prescribe new, expensive meds.  Then we need to remove the ability for insurance companies to question a prescription written by a doctor if those types of prescriptions are covered under the policy.

The doctor should have the final say on what treatments are used.  If the insurance company thinks a doctor is being unreasonable in general, they can drop them from their network.

[Ban my account ffs!]

My point with the second sentence is that I don't think the government insurance would give a damn about whether or not my asthma med cost $289 or $45.  They'd pay for whatever the doctor prescribed me.

Ok but at the same time, you were proving why some of us have very serious issues with a government system.

But while he has personal evidence to go by, you have only "could" and "might" and "maybe" tossed in with a bunch of "LONG WAITS AND SOCIALISM"

[Ban my account ffs!]

Well the current system isn't working so shouldn't we try something else, something we have a model for from every other developed nation. I don't see what's the harm in giving the insurance companies more competition with the option of a public plan. The level of service provided by them is horsesh**t as proven by the OP's example and countless others. Perhaps private insurance itself will improve as a result of competition.

I don't care that the insurance companies have competition. I love competition and I'm certainly not some insurance company hack but we're talking about a program that would cost so much money that it's just not feasible. Pointing to "every other developed nation" only goes so far, by the way. There are reasons why we can't implement such a system even though "every other developed nation" has done so.

Why can't America do it when every other developed nation can?  

These other developed nations are much, much smaller countries. We have enough problems with other enormous entitlement programs in this country so it's best to avoid another.

Then perhaps we should divide ourselves into several smaller regional nations.. if it is so difficult for a nation of our size to run entitlement programs, then perhaps we are too big.

Or you just make the states run the programs with certain rules and guidelines and minimums set forth by the federal government.