About Those 47 Million Uninsured...

How many times have we heard that number over the past couple years?

'There are 47 million uninsured Americans, and they're all going to DIE unless we give them universal coverage!!!'

Now that universal health care is actually in play, let's take a look at that number, shall we? Not long ago, Larry Kudlow at NRO provided some very illuminating analysis on just that:

According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?

There’s more. According the U.S. Census Bureau, we don’t have 47 million folks who are truly uninsured. When you take college kids plus those earning $75,000 or more who chose not to sign up, that removes roughly 20 million people. Then take out about 10 million more who are not U.S. citizens, and 11 million who are eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but have not signed up for some reason.

So that really leaves only 10 million to 15 million people who are truly long-term uninsured.

Yes, they need help. And yes, I would like to give it to them. But not with mandatory coverage, or new government-backed insurance plans, or massive tax increases. And certainly not with the Canadian-European-style nationalization that has always been the true goal of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

So, we're going to destroy the American economy -- the single biggest driver of economic prosperity and freedom this world has ever seen -- at a cost of trillions of dollars, all for 10-15 million people. Sure, they need help, but as Kudlow says, not like this.

No one needs the kind of help Obama is prescribing.

There's my two cents.