In watching an interview the other day with Craig T. Nelson, I couldn't help but be struck by how dramatically the role of government is both taken for granted, and ignored.  It is precisely this level of misunderstanding that has given rise to the hysterical nature of the dialog about health care.

"They should be allowed to go bankrupt. What happened...? We are a capitalistic society. OK. I go into business. I don't make it. I go bankrupt. They're not gonna bail me out.

I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope and they gave me encouragement and they gave me a vision. And that came from my education. "

Craig T. Nelson on Glenn Beck's show

I recently saw the article about the findings of Keiko the killer whale's unsuccessful release in 1998.  This was a result of a public campaign to "Free Willy" and reintroduce him into the wild after 19 years of captivity.  The killer whale was captured at approximately 2 years of age, so had no experience living in the wild, and apparently there was no information regarding the original family from where he was taken.

An entry on facebook caught my attention though:

We've all heard how the wheel is one of man's greatest inventions, and there are many theories or ideas regarding how it was achieved.  Certainly it seems rather plausible that rolling logs probably played a role in this development.

However, the more I think about it, the more this invention seems to fall short.  It occurred to me that we were focusing on exactly the most obvious, yet wrong part of the wheel and missing the important bit.  A wheel is fundamentally useless, but the true stroke of human genius was the invention of the axle.

Before we consider the issue of health insurance it is useful to examine the basis of insurance, generally, and how revenue is generated within that business model.  The basic premise is that a group of individuals will pay premiums which will provide a reserve of funds which can be used to pay out claims to any member of the group for whatever has been insured.  The model is relatively straightforward when it comes to car insurance, homeowner's, and even life insurance.

In effect, the business model is a gambling enterprise where the insurer is gambling that only a minimal number of claims will ever need to be paid, whereas the insured is gambling that they will be filing claims that need to be paid.  Consider the case of life insurance where premiums