The forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

The good doctor’s campaign is dead, and this mangy pack of mongrels is feeding on its corpse like those half-starved dogs you sometimes read about who get trapped inside a house with their dead owners.

Someone needs to put them down. It’s the only humane thing to do.

[HT Hot Air]

Some people marry for love, some for companionship, and others for status or money. Now comes another reason to get hitched: health insurance.

Yep. That Blue Cross card is quite the babe magnet:

In a poll released today, 7% of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse.

 And here’s a shocker—-the people who do this tend to be on the lower end of the earnings scale:

Those who cited health insurance as a factor in deciding to marry tended to have modest incomes. About 6 in 10 were in households making less than $50,000 a year.

I’m sure this story has provoked a good deal of tut-tutting among “progressives,” but I see it as a net benefit for society. I mean, maybe the uninsured ”crisis” will save the nuclear family!

That a tired Obama made such an (admittedly weird) error is less important than the collective yawn of the establishment media. Try to imagine what would have happened if John McCain had said such a thing.

Instead of making the occasional passing reference to it, the various “news” media would have run banner headlines and their op-ed pages would have been full of speculation about whether McCain is fit to be President at such an advanced age.

Look for many more examples of this double standard in the months to come.

[HT Marc Ambinder]

We have recently noticed people trying to leave the country … they are fed up with the English weather and their treatment on the NHS.

And what specifically did these undocumented aliens dislike about Britain’s socialized medical system?

They complained they could not get appointments to see a doctor or a dentist.

So, maybe the advocates of government-run health care have stumbled upon a cure for one of our most intractible problems. If we want to stem the tide of illlegals flooding over our borders, all we have to do is enact socialized medicine.

Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the hopes of so damaging him that he can’t win the general election? Is she doing this to keep her options alive for the 2012 presidential race?

Is she really that Machiavellian? Anyone familiar with the sordid political career of the Clintons will instinctively know the answer to that question:

She, the consummate realist, must know that she has no practical shot at the nomination herself after her numbing loss in North Carolina and her paper-thin margin in Indiana. But she welcomes the opportunity an ongoing candidacy offers to bash Obama and to drive a wedge between him and the voters he must have to beat McCain.

This is good news for America in general and health care in particular. A President Hillary would be a disaster and a President Obama would be worse. Long live the Democrat politics of personal destruction!

Insurance companies generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with ‘pre-existing conditions,’ since they represent such bad financial risks.

The basic idea here is that the employment-based insurance system offers protections to higher risk patients that would evaporate in an individual insurance market. However, as is often the case, the actual evidence refutes the Lefty meme.

In reality, as this Health Affairs article points out, a free individual market would offer more protection for high-risk patients than does the employment-based system so beloved of our “progressive” friends. Here’s the money quote:

A young male high risk who initially had small-group coverage faces a 44 percent chance of becoming uninsured in the next period–a risk nearly twice as great as it would be if he initially had individual insurance.

So, once again, Cohn and his fellow travelers have it wrong. Why? Because their positions are based on ideology rather than objective data. That’s OK for the cocktail circuit or some nutroot convention, but it’s no way to make actual policy.

In another expansion of its prescription drug program that has helped to increase its pharmacy sales, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it’s adding a 90-day supply of its prescription drugs for $10, increasing additional medications for women, and unveiling $4 over-the-counter medicines.

Wal-Mart’s $4 generic prescription drug program has already saved its customers a ton of money:

It has saved it’s customers almost $1.2 billion during the entire program period as consumers saved on expenses such as co-pays, the company said. Wal-Mart said acceptance of its offerings comes from both the insured and uninsured.

That’s the beauty of the market. Businesses want new customers, and the way to get them is to offer lower prices than the competition is offering. So, Wal-Mart and Target battle it out and we pay less for our meds.

Contrary to the BS promulgated by government health care advocates, the market will work just as well for the rest of the system—-if only those boneheads in D.C. will get out of the way. 

[HT Healthcare Economist]

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year.

Why? Because the bureaucrats who run the Canadian system failed to allocate enough beds:

The problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.

And even when there is a bed, there’s a shortage of neonatologists:

When extra NICU beds were added in Victoria, it took about a year before they were operational due to the difficulty in recruiting a neonatologist.

This story resonated with me because, as it happens,  my eldest daughter was a premie. She was a “thirty-week baby,” fifteen inches long and weighing in at a little less than three pounds.

And how did she fare in the evil “profit-driven” U.S. system? Well, there was a bed for her … about 100 yards away. And a neonatologist was on hand to manage her care from the moment she took her first breath.

What kind of moron would want to exchange a system like that for a pig’s breakfast like the Canadian system?

Rep. Ron Paul, the House member from Texas who technically remains in the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination against Sen. John McCain, predicts that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

Meanwhile, some of his fellow escapees are creating bedlam in the Republican delegate selection process:

An ongoing spat between supporters of Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Ron Paul flared again Thursday, when pro-Paul dissidents were kicked out of a Pasco County GOP Executive Committee meeting.

Hey guys, it’s time for you and your maundering messiah to go back to the asylum, get back on your meds, and stop pestering normal people. 

For example, his career as an Illinois state senator was marked by unwavering support for government mandates dictating the coverage health insurers must provide. The WSJ explains why this is bad:

A long list of studies show that mandates like the ones Mr. Obama has championed drive up the cost of insurance for the very people priced out of coverage.

And the cost increases caused by these mandates are significicant: 

A 2008 study by an insurance-industry supported research organization, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI), estimates that mandates increase the cost of basic health coverage by 20% to 50%, depending on the state.

So, what’s the alternative?

If insurers were allowed to offer “bare-bones” plans – which would be cheaper because they would cover just essential care – many consumers who are priced out of health insurance now would likely buy these plans instead of living without insurance.

But that’s not what Obama is offering the American people as a presidential candidate. According to his web site, he is for “guaranteed eligibility” and “comprehensive benefits.” In other words, more of the same.

“Guaranteed eligibility” and “comprehensive benefits” sound good to many voters, but government mandates providing such things will keep insurance prices high. Does that sound like”change” to you?