Regulations on medical care

As a nurse, I'm completely offended at our national dialogue on medical care right now.

1. We are debating whether people can decide NOT to purchase health insurance.

Are you serious? Working in Emergency Rooms for a few years, I know that everyone in Emergency medicine gets completely fed-up with the people coming to ERs for non-emergency care. "I have a blood blister." "I'm out of my meds." Why do they come to the ER? Because we are not allowed to turn them away by law. The effect is that providing treatment for those things slows down the process and people die waiting for care. In addition, we all pay more to cover those people who cannot pay. If I am required by law to treat people, they should be required by law to have insurance so that people do not die waiting for them to be treated for non-emergency problems and so that everyone does not have to pay higher rates to cover them.

2. Why are people so up in arms about government making decisions about their health care and end-of-life care unless they are women? If we can't have "death panels", why are we talking about allowing my employer to decide what procedures I can have?

3. If we are going to regulate women's health care, the government should handle it the way they do for other areas.

Government has no place telling my doctor to perform certain procedures or provide information which is contradictory to practice or research. But, they do have a role in making society behave in how we impact others. Here's my thought: If I can't have more than 4 cats in the city, why can my neighbor have 27 children? Maybe that's the role for government. Make sure that there are limits on the number of children and legislate that you have to have them licensed and tagged every year.