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 ...)

... for Rush to sponsor a World Wrestling Federation contestant?

"God's Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Christianize America.

This groundbreaking book covers the nefarious plan to subvert America's founding principles by getting as many Christians as possible into elected office and other positions of power, and to use their influence to turn America into a corporate state ruled according to an ancient 'Biblical' code."

Oh never mind, I guess that warning would be too late.

The wingers succeeded in demonizing ACORN and getting most of the Dems in Congress to fold like pieces of paper in a speed-origami contest. So who next? Why those nefarious Muslims, of course! Their obvious connection to secretly-Muslim Barrack Hussein Obama makes them even more dangerous than his ACORN Army.

Were Timothy McVeigh and Scott Roeder secret Muslims? How about Eric Robert Rudolph?

Oh yeah, and the Klu Klux Klan? Definitely Muslims.

The Cheney Administration took one of the biggest national security failures in the history of the country and turned it into an all-purpose excuse for anything they wanted to do. It was despicable, dishonorable, and grotesque, but it was also a very impressive feat in its own way. Rather like the attack itself, actually.

Do I laugh at his followers or pity them?

I prefer the more accurate tagline that Judge Chin inadvertently came up with, in the Fox vs Franken case:

"Wholly Without Merit"

Anyway, it's clear from some of the predictably silly responses here that Fox News doesn't need to pretend anymore. Their viewers do the job for them.

And yeah, I do actually watch Fox News once in a while. They were pretty bad during the nineties and got slowly worse through the Cheney years. Then they really started a nose-dive a little over a year ago and are still plummeting. Of course, that's "bad" and "worse" and so on in terms of honest journalism. In terms of what they actually do, they're obviously quite good at it.

And of course there's all those sweet tax deals, stadium funding, etc, etc that cities and states dole out for the questionable privilege of having a "hometown team". Corporate welfare at it's gaudiest.

Of course, come to that, Rush's bleatings are transmitted via public "socialist" airwaves that he gets to use for far less than the market worth would probably be.

Do you really not see a distinction between providing space for students of any faith to pray and promoting particular religious beliefs or religious activities? Or are you just being disingenuous?

Ah, but then she'll have even more proof that THEY are trying to silence her.

It's classic. Whatever happens just feeds into the delusion.

I've never had a flu shot in my life and I've only ever had the flu twice in my life. Felt like crap for a week or two and then fit as a fiddle.

How many people did you pass it on to?

See, here's the thing. Even if somebody's ethics (or lack thereof) mean that they don't want "alien" humans benefiting from a system that benefits from their work, there's a good selfish reason to try to keep these folks healthy. They're here. They are not walled away from the rest of us where they can get sick without bothering anybody. For cryin' out loud, a large percentage of our food is harvested by some of these people! By hand.

Are you people daft, or just ignorant of basic public health facts?

... a Senator or two gets elected to the board of Goldman Sachs.

Oh, wait. I'm guessing they'd only be given some kind of symbolic VP position. It's not like they're that important.

Yeah, impressively bogus non-apology "apology", wasn't it?

I guess if his Nazi analogy wasn't about the Holocaust, he must've been talking about something else the Nazis did. Maybe "in context" he was saying that health care reform was "precisely" comparable to invading Poland, or firing missiles into London, ... or painting roses.

Calling the other side a Nazi is never a good tactic

It never works, just discredits whoever uses it.

Well, that might be nice if it was true. Please note that according to MediaCorp and the Village, though, it depends a great deal on who calls who a Nazi.

If someone compares a Republican to a Nazi in a video for an online contest, that obviously immediately discredits them and the whole organization they submitted it to. But if someone calls a Democrat a Nazi, well, that seems to be a much tougher call. They may or may not have to issue a non-apology apology, but of course it's still a sign that there's a great deal of serious and deeply-felt opposition to the Democrat's radical proposals.

Such people are often worth interviewing repeatedly, and may even deserve their own cable news show.