Ann Coulter: an idiot's guide to an important issue

Most of Ann's most recent immature, uninformed babble - wittily entitled "Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is Stage 4" - is just that: fluff and nonsense, not worth reading much less commenting on. She did make a few woefully incorrect statements, though, that I just can't let pass.

At one point she says, "As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him ... or going uninsured."

Which, of course, is completely untrue. Young, healthy people, or anybody else for that matter, who do not want to have or can't get full health coverage but do not want to go completely uninsured have the option of buying what is commonly known as catastrophic health insurance, or a High Deductible Health Plan. The premiums are low and you pay your own medical expenses (which you presume will be low if you have such a plan) until you reach a certain amount, and then the insurance kicks in. It's good if you don't want coverage with all the bells and whistles, but want something in case you get hit by a car, or, taking Ann's example, get cancer.

Of course, the funny thing is, right after she says there are only two ways to go - insured or uninsured - she undermines her own argument:

"The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down -- not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you're in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas."

Really, Ann? You mean like catastrophic health insurance?

Of course, now we have to get into liberals and communists, something an Ann Coulter article can scarcely go without:

"Even two decades after the collapse of liberals' beloved Soviet Union, they can't grasp that it's easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism."

Well, except health care. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), an organization of 30 countries which accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy (sounds scary, right?), the United States spends 5% more of it's gross domestic product on health care than France, which spends the second-highest amount by percentage in the organization. We spend nearly 2.5 times as much per capita as the average OECD country on health care ($7,290 vs. $2,964), and somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% more than Norway, the country with the second-highest per capita spending, and I'm relatively sure that Norwegians are a bunch of raving mad socialists.

So, Ann, 0-for Thursday as per usual. Thanks for playing.