Lieberman Finds More Knives with Which to Stab His Party

Wow, I'm so glad that Barack Obama and Harry Reid supported Joe Lieberman after he stumped for John McCain. "He's with us on everything except the war," they said. Well, that's like saying "He's with us on everything except rape." I've had enough of this shithead since his pathetic showing as a running mate for Al Gore. He was a terrible choice as Democratic standard-bearer then and he's only gotten worse since then. Way worse. Progressively worse. (I shouldn't say "progressively". He's been anything but progressive.)

What was that about "everything except the war"? Oh yeah, and health care. Not just "I won't vote for the bill" not with us. More like "I will actively support a filibuster" not with us. Feel better now, guys? See what that gesture has gotten you?

Someone please tell me why this person who lost a Democratic primary, no longer has a D next to his name and campaigned for the candidate with an R next to his name -- who also happened to support every George W. Bush policy and picked an empty-headed spokesmodel as his running mate -- still has positions of leadership within the Democratic party.

What will it take, people? Does he have to actually try to assassinate the president? Kick him out. Kick him way out. He is not one of us. He can stay in the Senate if he wants. He won his seat (sort of) fair and square. But let an actual Democrat take over his leadership positions. I don't care who. He is the bottom of the pile. Please please please. Go blow, Joe.

America Loves Garlic Milkshakes!

John Boehner just gets dumber and dumber.

Here's what he had to say yesterday about the public option.

“I’m still trying to find the first American to talk to who’s in favor of the public option, other than a member of Congress or the administration. I’ve not talked to one, and I get to a lot of places and I’ve not had anyone come up to me — I know I’m inviting it — and lobby for the public option,” Boehner said.

“This thing (the public option) is about as unpopular as a garlic milkshake...”

He's looking about as hard for that lonesome American as O.J. is looking for Nicole's real killers.

Poll after poll shows between 50% and 75% of Americans supporting a public option.

Maybe Boehner just doesn't get out of his home state of Ohio very much. Well, here's a Quinnipiac poll (you have to scroll down almost all the way) showing 57% support and only 35% against in Ohio.

Well, maybe he only speaks to Republicans in his state. Okay, this is worst-case scenario here. Really stretching it. Even 28% of Republicans in Ohio support a public option. So, giving Boehner the most outrageous benefit of the doubt, even if Boehner never leaves his home state and studiously avoids anyone not in his own party, if he's spoken to more than 3 people, odds are he's run into one who supports this. And yet he just can't seem to find anyone who supports this horrible horrible thing, the poor dear.

We have two options here, and it doesn't take a genius to see this. Either John Boehner is incredibly stupid, or he is incredibly -- what's the word? -- LYING. There is no third option.

Meet the Press and Play It for a Sucker

If you have the stomach for it, watch this lengthy clip. It's hard to sit through just a few minutes of it, but I managed to hold my vomit in and make it to the end. It saddens me to report that I am not a better person for it.

But, if you want to know what the problem with "bipartisanship" is, this is a fine place to start. Representative (and House minority leader) John Boehner and senator Lindsay Graham are, how shall we say it, not exactly dealing in good faith here. And, as someone has pointed out previously, bipartisanship is a two-way street. And the traffic's only going one way right now.

These guys are regulars on shows like this. But if any of these shows had any journalistic standards at all, they'd be laughed off the sound stage on a regular basis. There's spin and there's complete bullshit and Mssrs. Boehner and Graham are way on the stinky side of that equation.

David Gregory occasionally interjects The Tough Question, as he always does to make himself look like a real journalist, but when one of his guests says something patently false, he just lets it go. This is why shitheads like this love these shows. It makes them look like they've run the gantlet, when they've done nothing of the sort. They control the message totally.

Here's the video. Have the Tylenol ready. And the Rolaids, for that matter. What the hell, get the whiskey too.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The transcript is here, if you can't handle looking at the crumbs. And believe me, it's tough.

Some choice moments, refuted (naturally) by Yours Truly.

BOEHNER: And if you look at what the president has been supporting, it’s this big government plan that has some 51 new agencies, boards, commissions, mandates that is going to get in the way of delivering quality care to the American people.

And your evidence for this is...what? How exactly is this going to "get in the way"? Are they going to be in the hospitals telling doctors not to treat patients? Like the insurance companies do now? We'll never know because Gregory doesn't ask.

GRAHAM: The president is selling something that people, quite frankly, are not buying. He’s been on everything but the food channel. Just a few weeks—you know, last week he was addressing the nation.

His problem is when he says the public auction—option won’t affect your healthcare choice, people don’t believe that. ... It’s about the president selling something that people inherently believe sounds too good and doesn’t add up.

People? What people? Here's what a Harris poll said last week.

Based on what you've read, seen or heard, how would you rate the health care plans proposed by each of the following?

President Obama: 53% good, 47% Bad
Democrats in Congress: 46 / 54
Republicans in Congress: 35 / 65

See, Lindsay, you would be one of those "Republicans in Congress" up there. You too, Boehner, FYI.

BOEHNER: Americans today are getting more news about what’s happening in their government than they have ever gotten before, and Americans are genuinely scared to death. Scared to death...

And if this is one of those "news" sources, I can see why. Imagine how scared they are if they watch Fox News, where you guys are the only ones whose "opinions" are considered worthwhile.

BOEHNER: There’s been no bipartisan conversation on Capitol Hill about health care. At some point when these big government plans fail—and they will, the Congress will not pass this—it’s really time for the president to hit the reset button, just stop all of this and let’s sit down and start over in a bipartisan way to build a plan that Americans will support.

You lie! There have been over 160 Republican amendments added to the current bill. Well beyond this, the "public option", which doesn't even seem to be on the table anymore, was a compromise to begin with. If the Democrats had any brains in their heads, they would have started with single-payer (which 60% of doctors support, by the way, those radicals) and the public option might have been a disappointing but fair compromise, not that they deserve one. This is a complete failure of politics.

And you know what, fuck you guys. You didn't give a shit about being "bipartisan" when you were in the majority. Public opinion is not on your side, and yet you speak as if it is not only on your side, but overwhelmingly so. Piss off.

This next one is my favorite.

GRAHAM: [Obama]’s changed his rhetoric because the speech was a disaster. What he’s trying to sell to the American people, they don’t buy. ... So the president’s saying things that people want to hear, but the details don’t add up.

Really? His approval rating went up after the speech and support for a public option, which was always at least in the 50% range before all of the bullshit started spewing, went up again too. To 76%. The speech was only a disaster if you wanted those numbers to go in the other direction. No honest person would ever call it a disaster. And no honest person would ever call Lindsay Graham an honest person. The American people, apparently, are buying it. But you'd never know it from watching "Meet the Press".

Meet Joe Wilson, Professional Asshole

What is there to say about Representative Joe Wilson's jaw-dropping breach of decorum at President Obama's health care speech? It defies belief.

Even if he really thought that BO was lying (he wasn't, by the way; not even a little), this was not the place to say so. This wasn't a debate, it was a speech. The Dems sat and listened to The Idiot lie to them about much more important things for eight years and never once did they do what I was doing at home. Which was standing up and saying exactly what Joe Wilson did to Obama. But I can call my TV screen a liar in the privacy of my own home. And even in a sternly-worded letter to my local newspaper. If I were in that chamber, I'd have to sit on my hands. It's proper.

What's even more ridiculous than one idiot heckling the president is the (inevitable, I suppose) defenders of the outburst. We were lectured on "respect for the office" for eight years until, conveniently, we didn't need to respect the office anymore. Because now things are different. Now we have some kind of un-American radical in office. Who just happened to have been elected mere months ago by a clear majority of American voters. But truth must be told. And Joe Wilson is our hero.

Oh, and pre-2000 respect for the office wasn't such a big deal either. Remember that? But 9/11 changed everything. Until it changed black. I mean, back.

The Right has become unbelievably unhinged since their worldview has come crashing down. Thomas Frank has a great piece in the >shudder< Wall Street Journal today detailing the steps that we've skipped on the road to outrage. Good stuff.

Wilson's outburst was stupid on several levels. First off, it was just culturally stupid. Decorum. We've covered this.

Second, his charge was based on a perceived loophole in the bill, not any fundamental issue with the bill. (It's actually pretty hilarious. Because there is no specific requirement to prove citizenship at the time of treatment, it's feasible that someone could sneak in and get some. Which is tantamount to explicitly offering care to illegals, of course. Bring your passport at all times. You'll need it to get into that ambulance.) So, even if he believed in the loophole, it didn't reach the level of a lie. But hollering "That's not entirely true, sir, and I'll be glad to demonstrate the flaw in your plan if given the opportunity!" is a bit too, shall we say, nuanced, for the current Republican party. "You lie!" is closer to the sixth-grade level they've been floating on lately.

Third, and I'm surprised that no one has talked about this, this was a pretty minor point that he was objecting to. Health care for illegal immigrants? There are so many larger points to concern yourself with, even in this particular debate. And this is the one that he stood up for and blew whatever reputation he had? You know, if I were a member of congress and I had one shot at a big movie moment, I'd save it for something really earth-shattering like, say, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction". As it is, Wilson just looks like a garden variety racist. Not to mention petty.

As Eugene Robinson notes, Wilson's was the worst, but hardly the only, breach of decorum. But here we are. Enjoy your devoted cult following, GOP. The rest of us think you're a bunch of petulant, childish assholes.

UPDATE: E.J. Dionne has now talked about the thing that I was surprised that no one was talking about. Read it here.

Dumb Letters: Problem? What Problem?

You know, I could pick a dumb letter out every day just on health care and what passes for debate in the this country.

Here's a nice one from the Chicago Tribune that's basically just the usual self-reliance thing. But there's a myopia to it that is alarmingly typical of those on the other side.

This is another one of those letters that has something to pick apart in every other line. Let's do that. If you want to read the whole thing first, I'll wait.

Done? Okay.

I find it rather disheartening to read many of the letters to the editor regarding the health-care debate. I wonder where people come up with some of the stuff they're griping about.

Uh oh. This spells trouble. We're going to see a lot of this in this letter. "I don't have any problems, so why would anybody else? Your HMO just denied your claim and your husband died? I'm fine, thank you. What's your problem?"

All of my experiences with the doctors and hospitals were very positive. I never once thought that I would want to go to another country for any of this work.

Great. Good for you. But that's not what the debate is about. It's about how it's managed and paid for. The doctors and hospitals aren't the problem. The insurance racket is.

And I never thought that it was someone else's responsibility to pay for it. Whatever happened to self-reliance?

Here we go. We're going to revisit this, because the letter writer later complains about "handouts". You knew it was coming.

The Democratic Party has done everything that it can to make as many people count on handouts as possible. We subsidize housing, heating, cooling, food, school lunches and breakfasts, day care; now we want to add health care to that list.

What, like this is some kind of plot? To what end? What do we gain by making people dependent on "handouts"? More votes? Wow. Great. Hey, it worked for the Republicans. They hand out so much to corporations that they all count on it now.

And I have two things to say about those awful hadnouts. First, all of the things that the letter writer mentions as subsidized are good things, essential things, things that a caring society would have no problem with.

Second, let's add a few things that Mr. Self-Reliance has undoubtedly taken advantage of himself. The police, the fire department, the highway department, the military and, not just the school lunches, but the whole damn school system. Want to be self-reliant? Put out your own fires. Take down that mugger by yourself. Teach your own kids (actually, don't; please don't). And invade that foreign nation on your own. Enjoy.

Nearly everyone I know has good things to say about their health care.

Yes, we know. But that isn't the problem. Don't you read my blog?

The main problem seems to be the cost of insurance.

Ah, good. Now we're getting to a point of agreement. Maybe this guy is okay after all.

It seems to me that the main reason for the high costs are that they are caused by government regulations. They force insurance companies to cover things that have nothing to do with a person's health, such as Viagra, fertility treatments, etc.

WHAT? You really think that this is the problem? A few boner pills? The cost of all of the Viagra in the world wouldn't cover one CEO's salary. If the government really wanted to force the insurance companies to do something, it would force them to cover everybody and not exclude based on pre-existing conditions. Or better yet, make all profits illegal. But they won't. They get too much money from them. Which is why things like Viagra are covered, by the way.

Let's have real competition in the market like we do with everything else. Health Savings Accounts work great. You have every incentive to go to the doctor only when you really need to, as you get to keep the money you don't spend.

Do I have to point out how stupid this is? Let's think about the "more competition" thing. How do insurance companies make money? Not by providing care but by denying it. More competition would mean companies working harder to drive down costs. There is one, and only one, way to do this: by denying more claims. Great idea, sport.

And Health Savings Accounts. They "work great" if you have money in them. If you don't, then what? My wallet works great when it's full of pictures of Andrew Jackson. When it doesn't, I can't get any of the stores to give me anything. I say I have a wallet and they just laugh at me. But don't worry. Competition will take care of everything.

And if it's in my account, then the benefit of not going to the doctor is really pointless. If I spend the money I saved by not going to the doctor (which would stimulate the economy, by the way), then it's not in my account in case I need it, which is the whole point of having the account. And if I do need it and use it all for health expenditures, well, now it's empty. What if something else happens? Do you understand this, dipshit?

I have incentive not to eat food too. The less I eat, the more money I keep. Think how much I could save by fasting for 365 days a year.

These accounts are in the Democrats' cross-hairs and will be gone if they get this health-care bill through. The only reason I can possibly think of why they want to get rid of them is that they work and people like them.

Okay, they don't formally exist. So they can't be in anyone's cross-hairs. Dude, if you want to keep an account for yourself strictly for health care, there is nothing to stop you from doing so. And hey, you know what else works and people like? Medicare. And all of those aforementioned "handouts". But this guy has a problem with that.

That is the problem. They want to control every aspect of as many people's lives as possible.

By giving them more choices. Yes, it all makes perfect sense. Knucklehead.

You Call This a Debate? Take Out the "t" and Add a "cl".

Hello, people. I haven't been around much lately. I've been thinking about stuff, just not writing about it.

One of the things I've been thinking about is health care. (Really? You're, like, the only one. Nobody's talking about it.)

You know, we all had a lovely series of moments when Obama was elected and took office. Hurray, America. We elected a black man. The Bush/Cheney era was ending. It was cleansing. It was wonderful. A new day was dawning.

Bullshit. Utter fucking bullshit. We are now seeing just how dishonest and depraved this nation really is.

Obama was never a flaming liberal. He was always a pragmatic centrist "liberal". I knew he was in trouble almost immediately upon taking office when the stimulus bill, for which Obama spent a lot of time attempting to get Republican buy-in got, oh, zero Republican votes. The red flag was not that the bill got no Republican votes. I kind of expected that. The red flag was that Republicans and their enablers in the supposedly liberal media howled with fury about how partisan Obama was being. "He never consulted us! This bill was supposed to be bipartisan and it's the most partisan bill ever! He's a fraud!" I knew at this point that nothing would be easy and that there was nothing, literally nothing he could do to get anything worthwhile done. Bipartisanship requires two willing parties. And we were at least one short. Country first? Nuh-uh.

And here we are at health care, a big issue for folks and one for which there is broad support among the American electorate. Here's a lovely New York Times poll showing that 72% of Americans support a government-run health plan. 72%! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get 72% of Americans to agree on anything? We can't get 72% of Americans to agree that torture is a bad thing. Yes, torture, which is unequivocally and unambiguously illegal under domestic and international law, not to mention immoral and ineffective. But 72% were for a public plan. And 7% had no opinion in the health care poll, which means only 20% of Americans opposed it. That's slightly more than the number that like Dick Cheney. And athlete's foot.

And yet, where are we with the public option (which, by the way, is only a shadow of what we should be moving towards, which is universal single-payer)? Well, it's about to be killed. Why? Because of a few people shouting at town hall meetings, per the direction of a few right-wing and corporate-sponsored groups, and media ass monkeys all around the joint.

I really don't have the strenght to go into the details right now, which you undoubtedly know already, but suffice it to say that every single argument I've heard against a public plan, let alone single-payer, has contained at least one whopping big fat honking lie. Not an untruth, not a stretch, not a minor prevarication, but something grossly, demonstrably false. Death panels! 6-month waits! No choices! Government takeover! Tyranny! All of it patently untrue and promoted relentlessly by the insurance industry and Fox News. Surprise surprise.

For crying out loud, they took out end-of-life care counseling (counseling!) because apparently it was easier to do so than to just explain why the death panel idea was a lie. How low must your opinion of the American people be when you can't debunk something so easily debunked?

Not low enough, apparently. Because now they're talking about taking the public option out of the mix. Why? Because lying works. That's how stupid we are. Congratulations, insurance industry. This is an absolute triumph of propaganda. You've managed to take a topic about which there was broad consensus and make it seem like an apocalyptic gummint nightmare to which the villagers were revolting with the pitchforks and the torches in an inspiring show of democracy in action.

Hey, Congress. If you're thinking of passing a bill that can't even include something so modest, and for which there was such support, for fear of pissing off a few yahoos and the corporations whose bidding they do, don't bother, okay? I can't bear the thought of you and the president congratulating yourselves for doing something worse than doing nothing.

I have officially lost all of the good feelings I had about this country around the turn of last year. My opinion of this country is actually lower than it was during the nightmare that was the Bush administration. And that is really saying something.

You-Must-Really-Think-We're Dumb Letters: The Cost of Health Care

Some people say that numbers don't lie. Others say "There are lies, damn lies and statistics."

I say that numbers don't lie, people do. Which places me squarely in the middle of those two sayings. That's just like me.

Here's a lovely letter about health care costs from a chap at the Pacific Research Institute, as published in today's New York Times. (By the way, the PRI's website touts the organization as "promoting individual freedom and personal responsibility". Guess where they're coming from.)

A recent study that I conducted for the Pacific Research Institute contradicts the majority opinion registered in your recent poll, namely that “government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.” Across nearly four decades, the opposite has been true.

The institute’s study compares the cost increases of all health care nationwide apart from the two flagship government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid, with Medicare’s cost increases. Since 1970, Medicare’s costs — even without the prescription drug benefit — have risen 34 percent more per patient.

The government has done a far worse job at holding down health care costs.

Hmm, notice anything missing there? I do. Monsieur notes that Medicare/Medicaid costs have risen at a higher rate per patient compared with what I'm assuming is a national average. (He doesn't say exactly what the comparison number is.) But it doesn't say what the actual cost is for each.

Is this important? Let's say I get my broccoli at Sam's Government Produce for $1.50. You get your broccoli at Max's Corporate Fruit and Veggie Stand for oh, $90.00. Forty years later, the price at Sam's has gone up to $10.50. Wow, a 600% increase! That's way more than the mere 50% increase at Max's, where you're now paying just $135.00 for your broccoli. So Max clearly knows how to keep his costs down, right? Right?

But wait, there's more. This "study" goes back to 1970, which means that about half of the data come from a period before managed care became the standard in the 1990s. Hardly a fair comparison. Coincidence? Uh-huh. I'd like to see the numbers from, say, 1995 on.

Sit down. We're not done here. This also doesn't take into account the quality of the care. Insurance companies hold down costs, as the first letter-writer in the NYT link notes, by denying care to existing patients and by charging giant deductibles that dissuade people from seeking treatment in the first place. Oh yeah, and by not even covering people who might actually need the coverage (i.e. sick people). So, a large and costly segment of the population is not included in the study for the writer's "good guys". Here's a surprise: sick people cost more to treat than healthy people. Who'da thunk?

This attempt at "research" is a joke. It's a level below a damn lie.

Dumb Letters: Canada Sucks at Health Care So We Will Too

From today's LA Times, a big fat dis to Canada and it's crummy crummy health care system. We DON'T want to be like them.

The government should not be guaranteeing "universal healthcare." Healthcare is a need, not a right. Rights are freedoms of action, not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by another. There's no such thing as a "right" to a car or an appendectomy. Whenever the government attempts to guarantee a service such as healthcare, it must control it, leading to Canadian-style rationing and waiting lists.

Instead of universal healthcare, we need free-market reforms, such as allowing patients to purchase insurance across state lines and use health savings accounts for routine expenses, and allowing insurers to sell inexpensive, catastrophic-only policies to cover rare but expensive events. Such reforms could reduce costs and make insurance available to millions who cannot currently afford it.

Paul Hsieh, MD
Sedalia, Colo.

This letter isn't stupid crazy batshit dumb. But it does fail to justify itself with anything concrete. The arguments are as old and weak as Nancy Reagan.

Fist of all, I completely agree with Dr. Hsieh's first statement. I don't believe that health care is a right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have it. Roads aren't a right either. They are a good provided by another. And the troopers patrolling them are a service provided by another. But the government builds them and staffs them because they help us. We seem to think that's okay. The argument that health care isn't, or shouldn't be, a "right" is immaterial.

Dr. Hsieh really falls apart when he brings Canada into the equation. He leads off the sentence with the premise that the government must "control" what it guarantees. Well, duh-fucking-uh. Did we expect the government to take something over and then just let it sit there? We've had enough of that with FEMA over the past eight years. The concept is ludicrous and only mentioned because, as we all know, government is always bad and the private sector is always good. The words "government" and "control" in the same sentence are meant only to scare you.

Now, where is the proof that universal health care in America will lead to rationing and waiting lists? Where? Our economy is a gazillion times greater than Canada's, even now. We have more than enough resources to cover everybody with no waiting lists and no rationing. We could have done it with room to spare with the money we spent, and continue to spend, in Iraq. Or that we just gave to Wall Street. The argument holds no water. (Notice also that free marketeers always point to Canada and its problems and never to, say, France, which does it really well.)

So, now that Dr. Hsieh has conclusively established that universal healthcare is a bad idea (rationing! government control!) he can stick the knife in with the old free-marketeers' standby. That's right, the health care market is just not open enough. If we just allow people to shop more, we'll all be okay.

Dude, I don't want to be able to afford health care. I don't want to shop. I just want to get it. Get it? These "reforms" will just lead to more money trickling UP to your pals in the insurance industry.

Fuck you, Dr. Hsieh, if that is your real name. And the insurance company you're shilling for.

Health "Care" in America

I am sick of people complaining about our health care system. Here's why. We do not have a health care "system" in this country. We have a health care industry. I'll be happy to complain about that and you're welcome to join me.

One of the dumbest concepts that anyone has ever come up with is that we are all health care "consumers" and wish to be treated as such. The people who pimp for this misbegotten notion are generally the people in the health care industry itself or those in Washington who get a lot of money from this industry. Which means, basically, everyone except maybe Dennis Kucinich.

When things are crummy and you're looking for someone to blame, by all means don't point a finger at the fact that you spent three weeks on the phone with seventeen different people to find out that you're completely covered for everything that didn't happen to you but not the thing that did happen. And then next week when the other thing happens to you you'll find out that you were covered for that, except for the long list of exceptions, at least one of which applies to you.

And don't point the finger at the fact that somebody had to be paid to be on the phone with you for three weeks. And to file the reports. And to review your case to make sure that they denied every goddamn penny that they could. Which is usually most of it.

No, the problem appears to be that we don't have enough "choice". We like choice. Who doesn't?

We spend a gargantuan amount of money in this country for fairly average health care. And that's only for those who actually receive it. We won't get started on those who don't. But even those who do get nothing but aggravation. We always end up paying a lot for services, even after we've paid our monthly premiums, our co-pays, our deductibles and god knows what else. I swear, insurance is the biggest legal racket this country has ever seen.

Read this pile of crap from John McCain. He blows a whole pile of words talking about how health care needs to improve but he never once mentions the reason it costs so much. It's not complicated. It's administrative costs. Cut out the middleman and everything costs less. Cut out the heartless bastards whose sole purpose it is to deny treatment and things will cost less and we will be healthier and happier. Let doctors spend more time being doctors and less time figuring out what's covered and what isn't and what forms they have to fill out and they'll be able to service us all better.

Or, if you're McCain, we should do this.

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

Ha ha! That's awesome. $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, please. But even freer markets for health care. What could go wrong? This alone should disqualify this man from being president.

We're about to spend a gazillion dollars to socialize Wall Street's debts (but never its profits) but once anybody suggests that single-payer health care is the way to go we hear howls of protest that we're turning into the Soviet Union on a stick and we simply cannot have that. Europe is bad, don't you know that? They're all, like, happy over there and stuff. We're Americans! Personal responsibility! The government can't run anything!

We have socialized fire protection, socialized police protection, socialized roads and a socialized military. We don't shop for an army. And we don't shop for cops when we're getting mugged. We just expect one to show up. We don't give a rat's petoot who it is as long as they've got a badge and a can of whoop-ass. So why on earth should we be expected to shop for something like health care? I'll tell ya. So someone can make a buck. Or a trillion.

It is immoral for corporations to make millions on (denying) health care. The health care industry deserves to die a swift death. It can't happen a moment too soon.