“That’s the object of the health-insurance companies,” explains Henry Kahn, a physician, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist and Emory professor. “They make obscene profits by not paying for health care when people need it.”

This non-sequitur comes after a description of disability insurance, not health insurance.  But you always know you’re going into dangerous waters when the phrase “obscene profits” comes up.  If this professor or this writer can articulate the difference between a profit and a profit margin, I will eat my copy of Free to Choose.

I would also note it would be far more difficult for insurance companies to behave this way if the consumer’s power had not beenstripped away by the Feds.

The Smiths had health insurance. But as the illnesses claimed their toll on the Smiths’ health, America’s evil – that’s the only suitable word for it – system of medicine undermined the lives they’d worked decades to build.

This is the quote that practically has me shaking with rage.  Evil?  Evil?!  Evil?!?!  What precisely makes our healthcare system “evil”? That it has made AIDS, MS and diabetes controllable ailments? Or that it worsens its infant mortality and lifespan numbers by trying to save premies other nations let die? Oh, I know!  It’s the free care that millions of uninsured people get every day in hospitals around the country.

As much as I loathe HMOs, I can’t bring myself to call them evil.  Greedy, yes.  Stupid, no question.  But evil?  I can’t stand socialized medicine. I’ll call it stupid, misguided, destructive. But evil is quite a word to be opening up—and one that is particularly galling in a movie (and an editorial) that smiles approvingly on the murderous, thieving Fidel Castro.

Finally, Sugg’s talking about the Donna Smith sob story.  This is a 52 year-old woman who was ruined when she developed uterine cancer while her husband had arterial problems. I guess they’d be better off in a socialized system, where they probably would have been allowed to die. But at least they would have died cheaply.

Yes, those evil Fidel-loving commies have a wonderful health-care system – and they live an average of three years longer than Americans. The Cubans provided care comparable to anything in America – the same care every Cuban receives.

I don’t think I can say anything that will match the utter stupidity and moral vacuousness of this statement.  Well one thing. Sugg’s lying about their lifespan. I think he has Cuba confused with France, which does indeed have three years on us. This is an understandable mix-up (at least per-Sarkozy).  But I would argue the tragic French lack of violence, drug abuse and obesity might be a bigger factor than our “evil” healthcare system.

According to the World Health Organization, we spend proportionately more of our gross national product on health care than any other nation – yet we rank 37th in the performance of our medical industry. France, Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan top the list.

The big problem is the 30-some percent of our health-care dollars that are wasted on the insurance companies. By comparison, Medicare, the health program for oldsters, operates with about 3 percent administrative costs.

I dealt with these Numbers in the Dark in my Ebert Fisking. In short, Medicare doesn’t administer Medicare; and our 37th ranking is partially because we’re not socialized.

Here in Georgia, the rubes live under the illusion of rugged individualism – a myth propagated by those who steal our money. In voting for George Bush, Gov. Sonny Perdue and the rest of the GOP, middle-class Georgians elect pickpockets and thieves.

Yes, Democrats are so honest and true, it makes me weep. But notice that we now get the elitist condescension.  Those who oppose socialized medicine are just deluded “rubes” who don’t know no better, no sir. And “rugged individualism” is a four-letter word.  We’re all in this together—one big family. I’m sure Michael Moore feels our pain, too.

Kahn, for example, heads a group of physicians who tallied Georgia health-care expenditures for 2003 at $37 billion. By eliminating the insurance companies, Kahn says, we’d save $8 billion. “With that we could provide health care for everyone in Georgia, without decreasing what’s paid to doctors and hospitals, and we’d still save at least 2 percent of that $37 billion,” he says. “Everybody is covered and costs go down.” U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has proposed a similar national plan.

I’ve been spent half an hour trying to find an analogy to make a joke with.  I can’t.  The statement is so ignorant, it’s as if he said our healthcare system would be better off run by Martians. Again, this is based on the myth that Medicare’s overhead is 2% (but wait, earlier he said it was 3!). I’m sure that a money-vomiting government program with no supervision will be beautifully efficient.

Never ask a Leftist for financial advice, that’s all I can say.

But in some ways, this is precisely what free-marketers are suggesting.  With HSAs and greater insurance freedom, the consumer would have more money in his hands and more control over it.

Hello, Karl Marx. Call it socialized medicine if you want.

But America is on life support that only a single-payer, no-insurance-company system, one that also regulates drug companies like utilities, can cure.

America is getting really stupid editorials written in alternative magazines.  It’s a crisis that only government regulation of the media can cure.  Calling the Fairness Doctrine!

And regulating drug companies like utilities? This would be the same regulation that caused massive blackouts in California and, according to the Left, is destroying the planet with fossil fuels.

But the comparison is just plain stupid.  My water company puts water in my house.  Water is not terribly complicated. The universe pretty much got it down 300,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s not going to suddenly mutate into a human-resistant strain of water. And plumbing goes back thousands of years. The biggest challenge my water company has is a burst main.  The water company is not going to invest millions of dollars into some experimental water only to get the daylights sued out of them when it turns out that, here’s a surprise, people with heart conditions have heart attacks.