Do facts mean NOTHING here? Never mind that David may have honestly thought that this slander of an industry was true. It isn't. It never has been.

If the insurance industry is shown to be well within normal parameters of what such an industry should be spending, people will draw different conclusions about our health industry than if you make up crap about how they're stealing us blind. That's what makes this relevant to the debate.

Why not go the whole hog? Just simply post that health insurance companies spend 60 percent of their revenues on crack whores? If you can just pull stuff out of your ass, why not?

As for Publius, he drifted off into the ether somewhere. I suspect he thought I was responding to his numbers (a whole different kettle of fish) and not the insurance ones. I wish I remember where I kept the hand puppets.

I have studied this issue for some time. Not one single source has ever actually catagorized what they mean by "health costs." Does it include the billions that U.S. companies put into research and FDA approval, so that Europe can buy the tech and drugs off the shelf? Does it count the billions spent on illegals? What's included? What isn't? Do the life expectancy figures include the hundreds of other variables between nations that affect life expectancy? Does the much-touted Medicare overhead include only what the government spends in its Medicare offices, or does it include the massive amount of bookkeeping and overhead that is the responsibility of providers? Is the assumption that efficiency is more important than choice? Removing choice would make a lot of things more efficient. Assume the U.S. had only five models of automobile. How much would that save in money and resources?

"Put everyone on Medicare" sounds great, until you realize that the Medicare we got is going broke big time with about an eighth of the population involved.