Via Andante of Collective Sigh in comments, go and read Adam Thompson’s piece on the Healthy Wisconsin plan just passed by the state Senate.

“Tastes great and less filling,” as in everyone’s covered and the government and businesses save money as compared to the current system. This is what a “single payer system” can do for all of us. Also note that it is a “fee-for-services” system, i.e. you pick your own doctor, and you and your doctor decide what care you need.

Now all we need is a “12-Step Program” to help Congress overcome its addiction to insurance company and Big Pharma campaign contributions. We have to have 61 “sober” Senators to get anything meaningful done, and that will not be easy.

Because LIEberman [Likud CT] and his stooge Levin [Idiot MI] have promised them that this time the Shrubbery won’t pull the ball away, the 97 adults present in the US Senate voted to condemn Iran for unsupported allegation of possible acts that might be taking place, and began running down the field to kick that football.

Lurch at Main and Central in his post, Iran Delenda Est!, notes the similarity between these actions and the Third Punic War [You do remember Latin II, right? Vets do tend to collect wars.]. He links to Ian Welsh’s post at the Agonist, The March to War With Iran.

So far the “evidence” against Iran wouldn’t be acceptable on The People’s Court [Judge Wapner always wanted receipts] much less the UN Security Council, and a lot of it is obviously faked.

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Kevin at Lean Left asks Does That Make Gordon Gecko[sic] Linux or Windows?

Markets create incentives for insurance companies to behave atrociously. The simplest way for an insurance company to become profitable is to never pay out any claims. Thus, insurance companies go to great lengths to not enroll people who can be expected to have high medical costs down the line and to find reasons to deny people the benefits for which they have paid their premiums.

First of all this attitude applies to all forms of insurance, not simply medical insurance, just ask homeowners affected by recent hurricanes. The insurance companies only want to cover people who will never file a claim, and they will do almost anything to avoid paying out.

The reality is when states started requiring automobile insurance, they had to create an auto insurance company to handle people that insurance companies refused to cover. Florida has had to do the same thing with homeowners’ insurance, create a state insurance company to cover people the insurance companies refuse to cover. The Federal government operates a life insurance company for the military, because the insurance companies don’t want to sell insurance to the military.

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Reuters reports that a new study confirms what should have been obvious: Bills pile up when uninsured get Medicare

BOSTON – Americans who previously had no health insurance rack up some expensive medical bills once they are old enough to be covered by Medicare, researchers said on Wednesday.

The reason: uninsured people put off the care they need, which makes it more expensive to treat them once Medicare is available to pay, Michael McWilliams of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston found.

And those people continue costing more for the first eight years they are in the program, McWilliams and colleagues reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

If you don’t have insurance, you will only seek medical assistance for life threatening problems – you can’t afford to do anything else. Healthcare costs could be significantly reduced if people had access to help before problems become emergencies.

Another point is that something has to be done to provide access to a doctor other than 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Even with excellent insurance coverage my Mother has ended up in the emergency room on weekends, because there was no other way of getting a needed prescription. These visits cost thousands of dollars and wouldn’t have been necessary if there was another system in place, like a walk-in clinic.