It's not the genius or the moron we should watch out for. It's the middle, where a little cooler gets someone elected, and where democracy achieves failure by ensuring nobody gets what they really want. We compromise until our committee has produced a camel or a giraffe. We don't need insurance. It helps a lot by underwriting the cost of our heart attacks. True, most of us might not be at risk for a heart attack, but if we do pool all that cash to take care of that big stuff, then your stitches or prostate exam can definitely be covered. If you had cash, piles of cash can make the ouchie go away. So for the lower 99%, insurance is a prudent service to we can subscribe. I consider the health insurance racket another systemized graft organ. This is an industry that produces nothing, but rations health care for us. It's a middleman industry, and it parked itself right on top of the medical community.

But if we're going with insurance instead of shorter life spans and fewer older dependents, then we should expect it to run like a responsible business. Exclusions for tattoo removals, pre-existing bullet wounds or cirrhosis make good sense, and only the government can waive these. On the same topic, 85-year old 'patients' should not be encouraged to undergo a $100,000 procedure to extend their lives 5 years, at least half of which will be spent in recovery, sucking out another $100,000 for tylenol and the occasional fresh bed linens.

There are rare cases where our health 'system' 'works'. First, some people have insurance or not, and they go to the doctor when they are sick, and they eat better, get sleep and avoid the endemic stress of the employed. In some cases, people get medical coverage as a benefit in their employment. So let's tax that right away and destroy the working part. If we tax it, it will shring. Progressives tend to look right past the facts to the ideals, and I'm here to remind you that everyone with employer-provided health benefits will lose them as soon as it becomes a tiny bit more expensive.

Another way our health system works is in DC. The NIH gets wads of cash every year to distribute among competing researchers. We patent their discoveries and send them to drug companies along with a pair of our panties, millions of dollars of tax incentives to keep them where they are, and then another huge wad of tax credits to underwrite their payroll and the expense of inventing drugs over again ahead of the patent death. I've been there. The drug company is a palace just like any other office building, where 2/3 of the people are pointless. "Sure, the drug came in the box here with the panties- but now we have to pick a color, market it, and that's expensive because we have to pay so many college graduates and then subsidize their health insurance so they can buy our products, like the blockbuster Viagra, and the other ones that let people with herpes get laid." And we medicate everything, from infected bellybutton piercings to misgivings and motions.

I fear the Democrats are missing some vital truths as they stomp toward a technical revision of the industry- this is NOT a system, just a pair of commensal industries. The big failure so far is the bubble. The only growth industry across America is health care. And wow is it increasing- compares to my house!

I bought a house in 2001, and in 6 years the value doubled. Of course, it's now 1.5 times the purchase price, because we saw a catastrophic 'correction' involving millions of people losing their homes to unrealistic expectations. I used to pay for my own health insurance through my business, but the premuims went up 20% every year. It's the same math, and will result in millions of people losing their health due to unrealistic expectations.

This is a bubble, and it has to be regulated now. Otherwise we're going to have to move our parents into the basement, and that's going way too far. Who was effected by the housing bubble? Everyone, from Tavo in Orange County to Haji between islands in Indonesia. AIG, et al, remember? It's called fallout, where the damage spreads but doesn't dissipate.

The ONLY way to move forward successfully, let real businesses continue their work, preserve availability and quality of care and establish the first systemized health care here in the world's headquarters is to establish a US Federal Health Insurance Plan (call it Insy Med?) and start selling HMO-style insurance at half the going rate with price fixes. We own AIG now, right?

The market will react, and private for-profit companies will figure out how to thrive. The people currently enjoying health care will continue to, and the heroic employers still providing or at least subsidizing insurance for their employees will find their costs decreasing for the first time- ever.

We're paying for drugs, alcoholism and cigarettes. We're paying for power plant-produced particulate. We're paying for Big Oil, Coal and the rest of the extraction industry. We're paying for suntans and hairspray. We're paying for a parking lot attendant to open the door for managers. To believe that we can bring down the cost of health without ameliorating these irritants is either wingnut liberal or wingnut RNC. Doesn't matter which.