Health care in coming years

I am very fortunate in this economy to have a job and health insurance. Many people in this world are not as fortunate. Health care and prescription coverage costs have gone through the roof. Our President wants the congress to have a resolution on his desk ready to sign by August. I have heard it said many times that doctors make way too much money... and charge way too much for their services. Working in the healthcare industry however, I have a much different view. Yes, doctors make a decent living, and I will never make what they make... but I also did not invest up to 15 years of life learning and training to be a physician. I am not on call all through the night, and I don't work the 70-80 hours that I have seen my physicians work. I do not have the student loans to repay that could be astronomical. I do not have to face the high malpractice premiums that physicians have to pay. Being a manager, I see the overhead costs, the decrease in reimbursement, and the many hoops insurance companies make us jump through to get authorization for services we provide. The company that I work for is meeting tonight to decide whether or not to merge with a local hospital. One thing is for certain... things are going to change. I wish I had the answer to our healthcare issues. I would love to see everyone in this world have the same opportunities at healthcare, but with that comes a price tag. I don't think the answer is socialized medicine. I believe the quality of our healthcare would definitely suffer. Its going to take a lot of give and take... our physicians are already seeing decreased reimbursement and increases in the cost of doing business, and like I've heard many times before... there are no new dollars in healthcare. I believe that each of us are going to have to take a more proactive approach to our healthcare. We are going to have to pay more for our medical care, and we need to take better care of ourselves to prevent future disease and costly prescriptions. Just like technology is constantly changing... we are going to be seeing many changes in healthcare. Lets just hope we go in the right direction. Some of the alternatives could be very scary!!