"In 2008, the U.S. spent only 19 percent of GDP on social programs, compared to nearly 30 percent in both Sweden and France."

Right.

And in 2007, the U.S. generated only 20% of it's electricity with nuclear power compared to 45% in Sweden and 78% in France. (Yes, these are real numbers.)

If we weren't a nation of racists, we would have more nuclear power plants.

Thanks to the brilliant Mr. Lind for revealing how it all fits together.

It's not that white folks hate black and brown folks. We just hate poor folks of any color.

Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,

And the rich folks hate the poor folks.

All of my folks hate all of your folks,

It's American as apple pie.

Tom Lehrer, "National Brotherhood Week"

1. From the start he insulted the public by taking their support for granted. He should have begun his presidency by naming a panel of citizens and experts to identify what reforms were needed, working to get buy-in from the nation. Instead, he put Washington insiders in control.

2. He further alienated the public by making closed-door deals with the AMA, hospital associations, insurers, and drug companies. Joe Voter didn't count. Only huge lobbying interests. And what happened to the most open White House in history?

3. He turned healthcare reform over to the reviled congress. So instead of a popular president trying to sell his own program, he's out there trying to pedal a program from much-loathed legislators.

4. He can't convincingly defend the reform program because he cannot honestly say what will be in it.

Because of his screw up, it will be at least a decade before anyone dares try again. We will suffer for his incompetence.

He is wrong to imply that a meeting with "..doctors to figure out how to ease her obvious suffering with pain medications, and how we could get her into a hospice facility" is an expense that would not be covered without a new Medicare benefit to reimburse doctors for voluntary end-of-life consultations.

That sort of treatment is already covered under Medicare. I know because like Reich, I helped shepherd a dying parent through his final weeks. This included home hospice care, which was paid for by Medicare.

With all the untruths and mischaracterizations from the Right, it's unfortunate that some of the same is coming from the Left.

...Dick Dale.

Bwahahaha!

Instead of directing congress, he turned them loose to do what they wanted. The results were entirely foreseeable: a huge bill with a lot of irrelevant, if well-intentioned, barnacles clinging to it.

The front-page declaration of HR 3200 reads: To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes [italics mine]. It's the "...for other purposes." crap Waxman's committee larded on that has provided openings to opponents of reform. There's nothing particularly wrong with Section 1233, "Advanced Care Planning Consultation." It just doesn't belong in a bill intended to fundamentally change healthcare policy.

The nation hates congress and likes the President, so wouldn't it make sense to have a specific plan associated with a popular president that he could go out and promote to the people? Noooo. Instead we have a slew of bills from the much-loathed congress, no one knows what the final bill will have in it, and the President is trying to sell something without honestly being able to say what it will be.

President Obama and Rahm Emanuel should have known better. Incompetence was supposed to have left the White House with Bush.

But the posts here reek of it.

If Kostric had shown up with his sign and gun at a Bush rally to drum up support for the Iraq war back in 2005, most of the posters here would be praising him.

And Kostric is one, too.

Yes, commercial insurers limit coverage and screen claims, rejecting some.

Yes, a government plan would do the same, because removing the profit motive does not eliminate the need to contain medical costs. There is not a government run system in the world that doesn't do this.

I'm for serious reform of healthcare and health insurance. But folks need to get realistic in their expectations. Medical care is expensive and all experts agree that it's going to get more so. They talk of "bending the curve," not flattening it.

If you think a Medicare-like program is the solution, you should first take a look at what Medicare does and does not cover, consider that its reimbursement rates are so low that fewer doctors will accept it and even good guys, like the Mayo Clinic, say they lose money on Medicare patients. And remember that Medicare is rapidly going broke.

In the meantime, Obama is pissing away our chances for serious reform. Today he went to New Hampshire to fight disinformation, but because of the half-assed way his administration has gone about the reform efforts, there is no plan to defend. Only a nebulous meta-plan.

Or the code of the hunter: If you kill it, you eat it.

The banality of this article deserves nothing better than the offensiveness of my comments.

Walter Cronkite had a compelling voice, an easy manner, and a signature pipe that further added to his 1950s avuncular quality. We saw him on the TV news, the "You Are There" educational series, and "The Twentieth Century."

He came into our living rooms. We felt like we knew him.

But we didn't.

This is not a criticism of Walter Cronkite, and it is not to say that Cronkite was unworthy of our trust. Only that we really don't know. Caution may be due before placing trust in any public figure about whom we know very little.