Why is it such a dirty topic - it's fascinating and necessary. The majority of a person's healthcare costs for their entire life are expended in the last 6 mos.

Yes, which is why the health insurance industry is so glad that they don't have to deal with most of those situations, which are instead dealt with via Medicaid -- a government-run health payer that gets far better marks from its participants than any insurance company.

As far as the expensive cases that insurance companies don't manage to dodge that way, they employ people to try to dodge other ways: bogus "pre-existing conditions", typos on one of their free-market-therefore-somehow-magically-not-bureaucratic forms, stalling until the person dies, etc, etc.

But hey, at least they're not the government. Because for some reason America is unable to reasonably manage something that lots of other countries do quite well, despite our being the Greatest Country in the World. (Well, aside from our infant mortality figures ... and age-adjusted mortality ... and disparity of treatment ... and per capita health costs ... and ...)

The last time I went to the DMV, it took me about 5 minutes from stepping in the door to leaving. Therefore, I guess government run health care would be great. It would probably take them less than a day to cure someone's cancer.

Of course, that line reasoning of reasoning is just as silly as yours, for the same three reasons.

1) It's comparing apples and oranges.

2) None of the proposals limping their way through Congress have anything to do with "government run health care".

3) It conveniently ignores the grotesque and deadly failure that is the current health insurance industry in the US. Which is what Congress is trying to deal with, however meekly and clumsily.

... better public schools. And more reasons for Republican leadership to continue to oppose that.

This is good news for McCain.

Oh wait, it dropped back below 10,000? It's probably Obama's fault.

No worries from me, though. My horoscope says that "Money comes when you go with the prevailing energies, not against them", and my astrologer and stockbroker agree that there are good times ahead.

... if I drank them, which I don't because they make me gag.

Pepsi: It's the Budweiser of soft drinks.

If a 911 type of event were to take place today, most if not all criticism of Obama would disappear. Not forever, but the immediate reaction would be flag waving and "patriotism".

...

Give Obama an event to point to and all will follow without question.

Are you kidding? The Right would waste no time calling for impeachment, there would be assaults (and probably assassinations) of Dem officials by teabaggers et al, and most of the punditocracy would solemnly and oh-so-regretfully suggest that it might be better for the country if Obama stepped down.

... is that significant numbers of Republican voters also want healthcare reform, including a public option. Let's give them what their supposed leaders don't want them to have.

Still, there is unequivocally more venom, more violent imagery, more threatening speech and more general hatred expressed in Salon's Letters pages, than on any "Birther" website that I can think of. (Actually, I need to confess -- I don't know any Birther websites. Should I?)

It's quite refreshing that you honestly admit that your comparison is based on a lack of knowledge.

Are you being sarcastic? The Senate Finance version of health reform is a joke, and if it weren't for their foot-dragging -- which Obama supported -- this could have been resolved months ago.

Playing the waiting-for-Snowe game provided some of the cover for the Dems acting on behalf of the insurance companies.

... someone pat Baucus on the head and give him a cookie.

Then throw the damn thing away and bring the best of the House plans up for a vote.

Wow, the old "They'll follow us home" argument. I haven't heard that one since the last time a Cheney crony used it about Iraq.

The Taliban already controls roughly half of Afghanistan, and if they really want to hit us on our home turf they can do it now. It's not like they don't know where the US is, and our government-run "security theater" is even less effective as security than it is as theater.

I'm not sure that not-as-bad news counts as good news.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I prefer it to bad news. Just sayin'.

... evidently necessitated a more verbose method of denial than most people use.

Given its strategic locale and bordering Pakistan (of some importance to us?) in particular alone, I think it does "matter" to us. "Serious" people also think so, even if merely on humanitarian or "we broke it, we own it" grounds. Misguided or not. HOW much it matters and so forth is a different question.

The first step to rebuilding a china shop is getting the damn bull out of it, not sending in more bulls.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. -- President Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17th, 1961

If they were actual journalists, they'd be embarrassed. If their bosses wanted actual journalists they'd fire these people and hire some. One can only conclude that these people are doing the job they're hired for rather than the job that we think they're supposed to be doing.