Skank

Gladwell has a great analogy on health care here:

…the idea of employer-based health care is just plain stupid–and only our familiarity with it and sheer inertia prevent us from rising up in rebellion. I always try to think of a suitable analogy and fail. The closest I can come is to imagine if we had employer-based subways in New York. You could ride the subway if you had a job. But if you lost your job, you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge. Of course, if you lost your job you would need the subway more than ever, because you couldn’t afford taxis and you would need to travel around looking for work. Right? In any case, what logical connection is there between employment and transporation? If you can answer that question, you can solve the riddle of the U.S. health care system.

Yeah, what he said.

I caught the end of the president’s SOTU speech last night. I was disappointed that he came out against human-animal hybrids. That means we won’t get werewolves until 2010 at the earliest and it may be a decade before centaurs are available for the president’s plans to switch to alternate energy sources. What a lost opportunity!