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Is Universal Healthcare the Key to Saving the Big Three Automakers?

As the saying goes, if you end up with a lemon make lemonade. Now that the government owns 80% of AIG maybe they should use it to make money from health care insurance. Basically, the high cost of health care is caused by expenses beyond the actual health care. A pill of aspirin (and most medication) costs pennies to make but delivered thru a health care provider or hospital emergency room can cost upwards of $6. The question is where does the extra $5.94ish go? Start counting by using the cost of malpractice insurance of 200K per doctor which ends up in the pockets of an insurer (a few bucks to the actual successful law suits), add all the man(woman)hours to generate paperwork at emergency rooms, insurer's offices, clinics, etc (most of it ends up in the trash, a recycle center, or a hospital archive). When all is said and done the actual cost of health care is mostly the cost of insurance not health care. Now that the government owns AIG maybe they should be the ones collecting those high premiums at a profit. Nice lemonade:
1) Cash in the excessive profit of an insurance company;
2) Indirectly hire a lot of people
3) What you pay for health care comes back to you as profit thru a "private" company.
In summary, keep AIG private, make sure they stay healthy and make tons of money in health insurace while they also dump non-insurance business they shouldn't have anyways.
Think about it instead of paying high premiums for universal health insurance you collect them.

Can the Fed Really Just Print Money?

That definition of money is bogus. Money should be a direct representation of the assets of the country with a premium to account for growth. The credit component is part of the trust. That is, if you trust the currency you use it as a civilized way of barter.
At the basic level the economy is controlled by money and widgets. The government prints the money and everybody else builds widgets (hopefully those we want or need). Prices are determined by the ratio of money to widgets. If widgets go up prices go down, if money goes down prices go down. If widgets disappear prices go up, if new money is printed prices go up. Unless money disappears due to unnatural causes, (fire at a bank, a mattress full of cash, Al Capone’s Vault, etc) its normal life goes from printing to generating economic activity to returning to the government in the form of tax where it dies and is replaced by a clone and put back in circulation.
Inflation is an increase in the ratio of money to widgets. Deflation is an increase in the ratio of widgets to money. In a period of inflation the government can bring prices down by taking money out of circulation, everybody else can bring prices down by making more needed widgets or putting money in storage (bank deposits, mattress, a foreign country, etc). In a period of deflation, the government can bring prices up by printing new money and putting it in circulation; everybody else can bring prices up by consuming widgets or putting them in storage, or taking money out of storage.

Jim Rogers on Today's Market

He is like a broken clock that is always right twice a day.
He operates from two basic principles:

Buy commodities
Short the dollar because inflation will hurt it.

Well, here we are in a commodity meltdown and deflation/disinflation round!!!He has been wrong all of 2008 and since he is still singing the same song chances are he will land in the poor house soon enough.