I saw that piece last night.  I guess in some ways it is not surprising that Health insurance has such low profit margins.  Wally makes the great point about volume giving the perception of huge profits.  The absolute numbers are big, but they are big all the way around.  I was kind of surprised to see a story like this come out of the AP.  I dont expect facts to get in the way of Democrat rhetoric though either.

Saw this today

liberals are terminally unserious people, and any time the country is focused on war, it just reminds everyone how pointless liberals are. When liberals took control of this country with two active wars and an economy in shambles, what was their focus? The health care ?crisis.? (When, by their standards, was health care last not in crisis? Was that a problem the Founding Fathers inherited from the British?)

and it immediatley mad me think of this thread.  It came from here and is a piece of political satire but I think the author has a point.  The whole health care deal is a contrived issue and one of the liberal's hobby-horses.  They are actually letting it distract them from the nations real business.  it really makes me wonder what their ultimate agenda is.Here is a pretty good analysis piece on the Senate legislation from AP: Who wins, who loses in Senate health bill  This bill is just as full of pork and favors as any other bill that has come out of congress in the last 50 years.  I will probably have a heart attack if this legislation actually lowers the deficit, I will not be surprised if raieses it though.

Time, perhaps, for Mrs. O to present her plan (ala Hillary)?

He dodges the question of how Europe finances their dynamic economy and related social programs; immigration, legal and illegal.  Lets compare the US and EU since the populations are roughly the same with the Eu being slightly larger.The US.  I found good data for the US for 2006 from the USCIS at: Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2006, and total Us Population from the Census Bureau at: National and State Population Estimates.  This says that the US population in 2006 was right around 299 million total with a total immigrant population of 29,170,000 of those 11,550,000 were estimated to be in the country illegally.The EU.  Eu stats are a little harder to come by.  I found total population data for 2009 at: The CIA World Factbook, I found Illegal Immigration staistics at: EU targeting illegal employment, and legal immigrants at: Europe: Population and Migration in 2005 Strangely enough, or not depending on your politics, official numbers are hard to find.  Hilariously enough, the European Commision website is so slow I had time to go get a haircut and come back before it finished loading the statistics page.  I ended up looking elsewhere for the numbers.Here is a neat little fact sheet on illegal immigration and people smuggling in the EU from Europol: FACILITATED ILLEGAL IMMIGRATIONINTO THE EUROPEAN UNION.  It is a little short on numbers though.

But it does speak to my point because without the immigration of young people into the work-force the social spending would not be sustainable, it isn't really in the first place.  Social spending is predicated on their always being enough people working to pay for those that don't.  Add in the demographic trends and there is trouble down the road.What I think is really funny about the American debate is you often hear the raw number of 30 million uninsured, that is less than 10% of the American population.  Is that a crisis?  How many people deliberatly choose to not get insurance?  Even more important how many people are refused care?  Notice I did not say refused insurance, but refused care?  The answer to that question is none; the supreme court has ruled that a hospital cannot refuse critical care.  They can refuse routine care but not critical.I just don't see why we should accept higher taxes to insure everybody in a measure that will not fix the underlying problem of high health-care costs.  If they are going to mandate then regulate the hell out of it.  Of course, then we will have health care along the British or Canadian model which everybody knows is a mess.  I also object to the notion that health insurance is a right, I cant find that in the constitution, but then I cant find the freedom from offense either.The current health-care bill is not about health care it is about income redistribution.  Tort reform and basic regulation would fix health care in America if it were truly broken.  Instead what we see is a blatant progressive power grab; one that hreatens to make every American dependent on the government.  It is no different than the fair tax proposal, which is also a crock.

The onion is hilarious.  I didn't want health care when I was a kid either nor does my son want it now.

The Onion - America's Finest News Source !   😉

Another thing we can agree on ;D

Time to revive this thread in light of yesterday's ruling in Florida.Now that not one but two Federal judges have ruled Obamacare constitutional I am very curious to see where this will go.  I saw an excellent piece this morning examining Judge Vinson's opinion in overturning the law.  I also thought it was hilarious that the White House Blog came out with a post calling his opinion "Judicial Activism" and judicial overreach, isnt' that the charge Republicans have been leveling all along and the Democrats have been poo-pooing?  Funny how it looks when the shoe is on the other foot.  It used to be the constitution is a living document and that is what judges were reading but when an opinion comes down from an originalist it is Activism.  Irony is so sweet.This is the dumbest part of the White House post I saw:

I am just scratching my head over this one.