Now, back to my heavenly cup of Peet’s. Hey, is nobody else going to fisk this article? (Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?)

I think that’s a fairly philisophical way of looking at it. The urban slang dictionary has a filthy description, something akin to the brilliance of teabagging. But, that there is another term for my expression is not my problem.

The granola bars belch and howl about how some percentage of our nation doesn’t have health insurance…

I guess “granola bars” is in reference to steak eaters and whiskey drinkers like me who spend a lot of their days fighting for progress. But the uninsured are far from our only concern. Did you see Michael Moore’s “Sicko?” No, of course you didn’t. But it was not about the uninsured, it was about the plight of folks who thought they had insurance, and were screwed over anyway. (And you don’t have to watch a Michael Moore movie to know many of those people, or be one.) Half of America’s bankruptcies each year – I forget how many million – are caused by medical bills, and 3/4 of those people had insurance at the time they got sick.

Insurance companies need to make a profit to survive, but in every other civilized country it is illegal for health insurance companies to make a profit. And if the government ever were to try to control costs by starting a good public option, that would not be controlling costs by dictat as you characterize it, but really offering the American public choice and competition (this was the idea anyhow, there may be too many whores still in Congress to let that really happen this year.)

And if the current private insurance model goes out of business due to that competition that would be a good thing, we would end up with single payer like most civilized nations have. And if they figure out a way to compete and keep everybody happy and really offer some useful service, that would also be a good thing.

And there are many other factors driving up health costs, but cutting out or cutting down the huge chunk that for-profit insurance takes out is the most important step.

I’ll read your thing again when I have time and have more to say. But I’ve been wondering if you can help us all with this: What’s this new imprecation “coffee filter?” Did you make it up, or should we be expecting to hear it from Glenn and Rush and Sean and Bill? And what does it mean?