What will be the long-term effects of allowing health-care costs to continue to soar?

Although managed care has become the bane of existence for patients and providers alike, this is the price we pay for living in a capitalist society. For good or ill (no pun intended), the bottom line is that health care is not a "right", but a privilege.

In the USA, healthcare is largely a private industry where market forces determine the cost. Encouraging competition (rather than thwarting it), theoretically, will drive eventually drive quality up and costs down.

Restricting competition in the healthcare industry, on the other hand (by, for example, moving to socialized medicine), would require ridiculous levels of taxation and lead to unacceptable access and quality issues (e.g., waiting HOURS in an "emergency room", receiving substandard government-regulated "care", allowing the government unrestricted access to "private" health care information of the citizenry). Moving to socialized medicine is simply NOT an acceptable alternative.

Unless the government steps up, less people will be able to afford health care and more people will needlessly die. I'm a nurse and I work at a hospital. It makes me sick how much the all-mighty dollar rules places like that. I believe all hospitals should be non-profit, and that insurance should be much less expensive. When it comes to health care, the person on the top shouldn't be funding their yacht and beach house with my illnesses.

people like me will be in high debt due to medical bills.
I had two major surgeries, brain surgery and hernia surgery WITH NO MEDICAL INSURANCE I will be paying the $35,000 debt off forever because of this.
Now I have to decide....pay hospital or pay for GAS!