Due to the taxes and social securities I paid to US government while I was working in LA and New York as a home staff for a company from Taiwan, I'd already earned myself credits of forty seasons, so I am now entitled to receive pension and Medicare. When I finally got my Medicare card and joined an insurance plan, I chose a PCP(Primary Care Physician, commonly known as family doctor)and saw him for prescribing me something for my hypertension.  I thought he might give me a routine check then issue the prescription as I was treated by the doctors in Taiwan.  No, I was wrong.  He asked many questions about my personal medical history, made some preliminary check, and gave me some shots.  At last he issued several "transfer" notices and urged me take further checks on my eyes, teeth, lung, colon, and so on. 

Are those check-ups necessary?  Will insurance companies be able to absorb all of these expenses?  Will those insurers shift the added cost on the insured by increasing the premium?  Is the system kind of squandering on medical resources?  And, more important, what should a patient do if he or she is not covered by an insurance plan?  I kept on asking myself?  I thought there must have something wrong about the system, but I just couldn't find me a correct answer. 

Now I have a vague knowledge of the answer.  Subject title is the cover story of this week's TIME.  The author told us the story how he survived his heart surgery which later invoiced him an exorbitant expense of $190,000.  Certainly, the insurance company the author is with will absorb most of it, but such an unbearable price will make any disease a catastrophic illness to any non-insured, or even to an insured family with low income because there is still a huge deductible yet to be paid. 

But how to solve the problem into which the US medical care is enmeshed: skyrocketing medical cost, waste on precious medical resources, inequality on distribution, interest entanglements among insurance companies and hospitals, and so on.  The author then suggests that medical institutions and insurance companies should be consolidated into singular entities.  By doing so, along with strict  regulations, the author argues the costs pertaining to excessive labor, unnecessary medications,  salaries to those fat cats, CEOs and middlemen, could be cut down drastically.  And the author also claims his suggestion is the key to success for the so-called Obamacare. 

How and why American health insurance would have fallen into the trap of such an almost intractable situation?  My point is: privatization.  Therefore, we should thank to both governments of Taiwan and Mainland, whose national health insurance schemes have successfully, though partly, avoided the "ills" of their counterparts that running under private business and free competition.  There are still rooms for us to improve our systems; however, the most important thing we can do now is to contribute more and not to take advantage from the relative cheap national health network.