Compared to the huge sums we’ve shelled out without batting an eyelash over the past year, why are we going to have a shitty, compromised plan just so Blanche Lincoln and Olympia Snowe can achieve their objectives of protecting insurance company profits, when for $30 billion more a year we could actually do it right? Why is that suddenly such a big price tag?

It’s ’such a big price tag’ because these people fail to recognize:
1. The opportunities available in the health care industry for NEW EMPLOYMENT categories that involve everything from providing pedicures to the elderly (who often have problems with this simple task), to fitness classes for kids, and
2. Their clueless chatter about ‘high costs’ seem to be premised on the faulty notion that magically if there is no health care legislation no one will ever need to see a physician again. Ever. At least, not in the U.S. of A.

I’m with BooRadley — the health care entities add cost without adding value. We’re paying too many people to push paper and navigate the minutia of policy ‘contracts’, while too few are involved in direct delivery of services.

The other part these economic geniuses overlook is the fact that anyone can own stock in a health care or insurance agency. What is Blanche Lincoln going to tell her constituents if it turns out that one of the ’shareholders’ for Premera is a drug lord in Mexico? What if another ’shareholder’ happens to be a Ugandan mine owner? How does that ‘increase the efficiency’ of US medical care, when the profits of health insurance companies can be siphoned off anywhere on the planet?

Congressional claims about ‘market forces’ for health care are utterly bogus. I’d really like some of those health care insurance companies to list out in detail all their shareholders for the past 20 years. Might make a few eyeballs pop open rather widely.