This has to be one of the most clueless lead paragraphs to ever appear at  Corrente:

One of the goals of single-payer health insurance is to put the health insurance companies out of business. Another is to reduce the paperwork load at doctor’s offices, clinics, hospitals and for other health care providers.

It is the beginning of a post titled, Has anyone considered this? written by someone named Badger.

I’m sorry, but the one and only goal of the single-payer health insurance plan is to make health care available to all Americans. In the civilized world where everyone has health care coverage, there are health insurance companies, although many exist merely to provide health care coverage for people who travel to the US or other uncivilized countries.

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I haven’t written much about the health care crisis in this country basically because I looked at the problem years ago and the answer was obvious: Medicare for all.

The numbers all point at it, and no one is able to make the numbers change – Medicare is the most efficient provider of health insurance in the United States by a wide margin.

When you look at the savings from switching all of the current government systems to Medicare coverage, and then factor in all of the problems for business and the states from our current hodgepodge system, the answer leaps out at you.

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Eric Alterman’s Altercation is moving to The Nation starting New Year’s. The new address is http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation

Jill has a bright new look at Cookies in Heaven.

The Agonist will finish their Drupal “real soon now”. Upgrades are generally known to take longer and cost more than anticipated.

Mary Beth of Wampum has been accepted to law school.

While December 26th is celebrated by a lot of people in the US in shopping malls returning gifts or taking advantage of inventory clearance sales, there are other celebrations.

It is the first day of the Kwanzaa celebration, which is explained at the link.

It is Boxing Day, a celebration of noblesse oblige when the upper classes bestow gifts on the lower and the contents of the poor boxes are distributed. Under the feudal system this was part of the “contract,” the mutual system of obligations that tied the system together.

As the feast of St. Stephen it honors the first Christian martyr, but Ireland’s Saint Stephen’s Day celebration is a bit different and is the reason for the wren on this post.

However, this post is really my complaint about “Good King Whatshisface.”

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Merry Catmas?

HO! … Ho? … Whatever.

[Editor: A rerun showing as close as I will ever get to putting antlers or a hat on any of the cats.

Friday Ark