QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  From a well-reported guest column in the New York Daily News:

The whole conversation surrounding health care rests on the false but widely held assumption that there are currently 47 million uninsured Americans. That number is on the tongue of every cable news pundit and policy wonk in Washington. After all, you can't have a massive solution without a massive-seeming problem.

In a new study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O'Neill, commissioned by the Employment Policies Institute, it was determined that 43% of people counted in the overblown 47 million uninsured estimate actually have incomes of at least 250% of the poverty level (averaging about $65,000) and could afford to purchase private health coverage. They are not insured because they choose not to pay for insurance. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the people in this 43% pay for dinners out, cell phones, cable TV and many other "higher" priorities.

Another gem:

Beyond the fact that nearly half of the purported uninsured could actually purchase health care coverage if they so chose, there are other rarely mentioned groups being included in the bogus 47 million statistic. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber estimates that illegal immigrants constitute 13% of the uninsured population.

COMMENT:  Congress is about to enact a hugely expensive solution to a problem it doesn't even understand.  Indeed, the lack of interest in facts is stunning.  It's especially stunning when you look at the media, which is always whining about "the people's right to know."  Apparently, there are many things the people don't have a right to know, like the real nature of the health-care "crisis."

There are certainly problems in the health-care system.  Some of them should outrage us.  And I don't excuse some of the behavior of private insurers.  I've heard too many stories from physicians I trust.  However, the idea behind reform is to fix problems, carefully and cautiously, and, to cite the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm.  What we're getting from the leftist Dems in Congress is a hatchet, when we really need a scalpel - in capable hands.

July 16, 2009