The AMA report card to which JaaZee refers is actually looking at issues surrounding claims processing -- which caused the AMA to bring a class-action lawsuit against the 10 largest health insurance companies (but not Medicare) earlier in this decade. Metric 12, cited by JaaZee, has nothing to do with denying claims as suggested, it has to do with specific claim lines being denied, typically because the editing of the overall claim suggests that the procedure should be included as part of a larger procedure.

For example -- you go to your doctor for an annual checkup and the doctor requests a urine sample. The payer, whether Medicare or private insurance, may deny any extra payment for the urinalysis because it is considered included in the fee paid for doing the comprehensive physical. That would be a claim line denied, but there was no denial of care, and the physician was paid for providing that care.

The other points made in JaaZee's post suffer from similar shortcomings.

Insurance companies fight against a public option because they know it is the end of their obscene profits. What is really sad about this "debate" is seeing so many of the very people who get taken advantage of by insurance companies, buying into the industry talking points, all the while not knowing that they are only hurting themselves.

It is a distraction from the central issue to be drawn into a side debate about how many dollars per day Palin and Obama sought in earmarks. But if we must go down that road (hopefully only briefly) we should at least put this in the proper perspective by using the appropriate metric, namely: dollars/resident/day. After all, both Governors and Senators are seeking services and benefits for the residents, not simply a collective entity as a whole. (Indeed, that is the whole reason why the Bridge to Nowhere was a big fiasco -- a huge expenditure for the benefit of a very few people.)

Using the latest Census Bureau data for Alaska and Illinois, as of July 2007 the population of Alaska was 683,478 whereas that of Illinois was 12,852,548. Thus, using the proper metric, it is NOT true that Palin and Obama were seeking a comparable amount of earmarks. To the contrary, Palin sought a whopping $1.48 million whereas Obama only sought a modest $78,000.

But the real issue here is Palin's, and ultimately McCain's, hypocrisy -- only they are touting her anti-earmark credentials to bolster her absurd reformer claim. Palin's homespun description of her record is replete with lies and distortions -- and we would be better served keeping the focus on that subject and avoid meaningless comparisons.

According to the article, the total recoverable oil from both ANWR and offshore is 30 billion barrels. Sounds like a lot, until you do the math.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the US consumed 20.7 million barrels of oil per day.

(See http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html)

In round figures, that means that the 30 billion barrels waiting to be extracted would feed our habit for ~ 1,500 days -- just a little over 4 years at present consumption rates.

The solution to solving our energy needs is to be found in expanding the role of renewable energy and reducing our consumption. Nothing else has a chance of penciling out.