"If we mandate that an end of life expert speak with individuals every 5 years to tell each of us about our options on how to end their lives, jeez why don't we have a civil servant nutritionist come talk to me every 5 years about how eating at 8pm is unhealthy and I should be following the governments instructions on what is best to eat? (even if their instructions are proven to be wrong) Well then maybe I can have a a retirement expert come tell me my options on how I can invest my money, purely voluntary of course. Maybe an energy expert to come to tell me my options on how to lead a greener life."

Except there's no mandate. You're making it up. Lying isn't a discussion.

The same healthcare deal that Obama and Congress, and 2.7 million other federal employees have, you mean?

You're right, it's a decent plan (plans, there are choices). It would be a good start.

"To think that a government official discussing "end-of-life education" with an elderly, infirm person, in perpetual pain, can't be seen as a form of govt intimidation is crazy. Or at least willfuly delusional."

Yeah, right. Except it's HER DOCTOR discussing HER CARE!

Willfully delusional, or willfully denying reality, or a bald-faced liar undeterred by facts, is what you are.

So you're criticizing in letters a review you haven't read, and you haven't read it because the reviewer is reviewing a movie, and she hasn't read the book.

Aaaaalrighty then!

Why not just use reconciliation? Then they don't really need the blue dogs, right? Or not too many of them. Reconciliation rules are the real nuclear option.

Medicare intermediaries already process the claims for medicare. In the region where I live, BCBS North Dakota won the contract from BCBS Colorado around 12 or 15 years ago.

I agree. However, we do need to quit acting like the plan that Congress has is something special. It's not. They have the same plan (choice of plans) that 2.7 million other federal workers have. I think they get to keep it after they leave Congress, which is pretty special to those of us who are held in our jobs by our insurance, but the plans federal employees can choose from are not all that different than the plans I can choose from as a state employee, and they are more costly and less generous than the really great (HMO) plan I had at a private employer.

The federal employees benefit plans are designed to be comprehensive and to have a range of cost-sharing at different price points. They cover needed treatments and prescription drugs. There are providers in-network all over the US, if the BCBS option is chosen. They would be a great pattern for any reformed health insurance plans to conform to.

I can hardly stand to watch the woman. The flounciness, the goddamn eye scrunch she thinks is so cute. Ugh.

And shouting doesn't make it so.

24 year old true believers, sitting next to each other in a cubicle, either volunteering or being paid by the letter.

Yep, convincing us, you are.

I heard most of the interview on the way to work this morning. Steele sounded like an idiot. And also like he wasn't entirely sure what "nuanced" meant. The interviewer said, it sounds like you have a problem with that word, how about complicated? Steele thought complicated was better.

I haven't heard him speak before, what I mainly thought it sounded like was a "man in the street" interview, because he had nothing to say about the debate. He's kind of not ready for primetime, I think.

So let me get this straight-you disagree with circumcision, so you agree that lying to people that the gummint is gonna come cut off the foreskin of innocent little babies is a good idea?

The article was about the lying, not the advisability or non-advisability of actual circumcision.

I don't like circumcision either, and my 21-year old son is not circumcised. But I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh that a scientific study and follow-up recommendation should be demonized and lied about and used to scare people (or more likely, used to give people something else to scream about, though they don't believe it, either).

You should really be smarter than this. You see, Scotland is another country! It's not the US. No, really. And despite the fact that we should obviously be all-powerful and able to dictate to other countries what they do with their prisoners, unfortunately, I guess we're just not. So would you just try to overcome your obsession with this? No one here had anything to do with it. As an aside, in Britain prisoners who have a terminal illness are often released. They call it compassionate leave, but I bet they just don't want to deal with the end of life care in a jail setting.

Once again the idiot contention that congress' healthcare is something special. It's not. It's the federal employees health insurance plan. 2.7 million federal employees have it. It's probably pretty close to "Obamacare" which doesn't actually exist, since the congress is writing the legislation, and has about 5 bills out there.

She's not that big. Oh you mean it's the lies that are big? never mind.

Noblesse Oblige certainly was not the phrase that meant what you said. It was "droit du seigneur" (my spelling is probably off).

"But in the big scheme of things, Salon is a crappy little website made up of 9 people and their 50 insane crackpot ideologue buddies, in violent agreement with one another."

All so cleverly commented on over and over by NPNP, who has to change his name every few months for whatever reason (right, electrorobot?) and snipe like a 7th grader from the sidelines.

4 letter already, and none of the resident misogynists has come on to say that women hit men, too, so there?

Huh.