Heck, as a professional Glibertarian, she’s probably printing off all our nasty snark (or getting the interns to print it off for her, the lazy slut) and forwarding it to her current paymasters as proof that she’s attracting all the right eyeballs. The more we mock her, the better her chances for a bonus at year-end. Yay, capitalism in action!

On a side note, isn’t Jackie Mackie Paisley Parsley living in Costa Rica, not least because of its high-quality health-care services? I know I saw an article about American retirees taking “medical vacations” there in order to take advantage of cheap hip replacements and balloon angiplasties at bargain prices, but I’m not going to do any further research, because why should I work harder for free than McArdle does for money (/snark)?

Wow. Join me in a rousing chorus of God Bless America, anyone?

Would “because it’s the most comprehensive and authoritative source available, and the factors it considers are not particularly volatile except in countries experiencing dramatic upheaval” count as “a pretty darn good reason”?

Granted, it is a bit strange that everyone references that work and not the more recent statistics that are released every year, as far as I can tell. But I blame that on the self-referential circle-jerk that passes for reporting these days. Too busy doing quality journalism to bother with little things like research, dontchaknow.

From costaricabooks.com (about retirement to Costa Rica):

Many international medical authorities rate Costa Rica as having one of the best low-cost medical care systems in the world, when preventive and curative medicines are considered. The United Nations consistently ranks Costa Rica’s public health system as the best in Latin America and one of the top 20 in the world.

Ahead of the USA, incidentally.

Buying into the state-run system costs about US$60/month for ages 55 and under, much less for people older than 55. Something like 90% of the people in the country are in the system. Prexisting conditions? Covered. Medications? Covered. (many medications are OTC in Costa Rica, btw) Eye care? Covered. Dental care? Covered. There are more expensive private plans available if you want to use private hospitals or doctors, but the public ones are considered quite good by most of the US retirees who have used them.

So, if she were an ‘average citizen’ in Costa Rica, she most likely wouldn’t be uninsured, and she’d be a helluva lot better off than an ‘average citizen’ here. I wish I were an ‘average citizen’ in Costa Rica.

What a stupid, dishonest woman she is.

But of course, concepts like “data” and “indicators” are no match for the ultimate determinant of a society’s worth: whether Megan “would rather be poor there” than somewhere else.

Friggin’ Andy Rooney would be embarrassed to put his name on this crap.

errmmm, how does one get there?

And it’s not Gavin, but Brad the Rocket that TOTALLY crushes on the Megan. dig this:
To be clear here, I bear no particular malice to Ms. McArdle as I do with other, more vile propagandists, i.e., Ole Perfesser Reynolds, Malkin, etc. She’s simply a person who is amusingly wrong about a great many things, but I don’t put her in the same class as the Mark Steyns of the world.

It’s luuuurrrrve, I tell ya.

She’s intellectually lazy, more than anything else. Guh.

Know what else we have more of than the Euros, Megan? Guns.

Bet you won’t be making that argument anytime soon.

I seem to have received a far superior education at Football U. than she did at whatever Ivy she attended, and at a fraction of the cost. Go me!

Yes. Because she’s aware that we’re aware that she is getting paid for being a careerist hack, and will continue to shin her way up the greasy pole precisely because she is a hack.

Isn’t that the her end-all argument on every subject. She is “pretty sure” of something without any evidence. She assumes, she guesses.

And she has a nifty line in argument from anecdote. Ultimately, it’s her gut and her cousin’s best friend’s dog-walker’s brother’s boss that decide all arguments for her, and — quel surprise — always in her favour.

I’d far rather be an uninsured day laborer in San Francisco, than in the Dominican Republic. For that matter, I’d rather be uninsured anywhere in the United States than an average citizen in Costa Rica.

Sadly, she can only say these things because she will never be a day laborer or uninsured, anywhere. However, there is always the possibility that the uninsured laborer who prepares her restaurant food, or cleans her hotel room, or nannies her children, is sick as a dog and highly contagious. Then she might learn the meaning of “enlightened self-interest.”

I learned from her comments section that those 50 million are uninsured because they choose to be. See, no problem