WINGNUTS JUST DON'T GET IT

On almost any issue, they pull out conservative myths and misdirection that only serves to avoid reality and reinforce their straight-jacket ideology.

A great example is health care and wingnut Senator Jim DeMint, arguing for the Free Market Fairy, writes this in Real Clear Politics last Friday:

Do we want a solution that offers American more freedom, more choice and more competition?

DeMint doesn't realize that the market has failed us miserably and there is no sign at all that relying on it will improve our health care system. Here's one counter-example to DeMint's wingnuttery:

Even the Insured Feel Strain of Health Costs
By REED ABELSON and MILT FREUDENHEIM
Published: May 4, 2008
NY Times

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.

Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.

“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”

The problem of affording health care is most acute for people with no insurance, a group expected to soon exceed 48 million, but those with insurance say they too are feeling the pain.

Since the recession of 2001, the employee’s average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled — to $3,300, up from $1,800 — while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household’s income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household’s spending.