As for age discrimination and unemployment: Until our government practices sound fiscal principles (and we ALL weather the pain of the correction [read: Depression] that results), unemployment will continue to fluctuate with the money supply.

The age discrimination of which you speak, is a symptom of inflation. But realize that inflation doesn’t mean “rising prices/wages;” those are a symptom of inflation. Inflation, literally, is an “increase in the money supply” (which, in the USA, is controlled by the Federal Reserve System). An increase in the supply of money simply devalues all of the currency that is at large. Dollars are no longer worth as much as they were, so companies demand more of them for their products; employees demand more of them for their salaries.

When employees demand more (not because they’re greedy, but because the government has devalued what they they’re earning), employers lay them off in exchange for workers who demand less (not because they’re less greedy, but because they don’t have the financial obligations—yet—of their older colleagues).

Hope that helps.

1) Educate the public on what insurance should be. It is meant to cover a catastrophic event, not to pay for a trip to the doctor every time you have a cold. This will eliminate excess when healthy people understand it makes sense to pay $75 to see a doctor out of pocket in order to save $500 a month on insurance premiums.

2) Untie healthcare from employers. Give everyone the CASH in their salaries to go on the open competitive market to buy a plan. Creates more competition and competition lowers prices.

3) Society needs to come together to make the hard decisions about end of life treatment and when its appropriate for society to stop paying. Its a very difficult topic, but it will bankrupt this country when such a large percentage of healthcare is paid in the final week or two of life hooked up to machines with an inevitable outcome.

4. Stop the lawsuits like John said above. You should not be able to sue a doctor unless it is obvious negligence (operated on the wrong eye). Doctors now run every test in the world just to cover every possible angle. Medicine is not a perfect science.

The theme with all of this is fixing the SYSTEM, not just giving everyone a blank check to pay for services in a broken system. Once these problems are addressed, so much excess will be purged from the system that the costs left for basic coverage for the healthy uninsured plus the costs to insure the “uninsurable” with be negligible compared to the current monstrosity about to be signed. Just my 2 cents!