Actually Michael Moore made the same sort of point, that in requiring us all to have insurance the only clear winner was the insurance industry. So on the intellectual level I am appalled by this bill - with no public option it's meaningless.

However, in the primitive brain space, I am all for anyhting that gets John Boehner that worked up. I was hoping for an aneurysm live on C-Span but I was disappointed.

Also - while there's no official public option (though, heh heh... watch your backs, Repubs... something is simmering in the pot...) - there was, and is, the real public option - Medicaid - which was expaned to cover people who can't afford to buy their own health insurance.

Whereas I wish this were actually "socialist", I wonder if this bill is as dire as some on the left are making it out to be. It's literally a life-saver for people like me. I was laid off last year (for a week - was rehired a week later!) and I was shitting myself scrawny - there is no way I can get by without insurance, and yet my pre-exisitng condition prevented me from getting it.

Now? I have more freedom - I can go from job to job - I don't have to be tethered to one company because of their benefits. I want health insurance? I can just go out and buy it. For cheap!

This bill is solid gold as far as I'm concerned.

Oh and Geoff - I get your point now - that insurance companies won't pay doctors for service, not the other way around. That's different from now... how? Insurance companies are evil. Serial killer, child-raper evil. Of course they won't pay. Got an easy answer for that one. It rhymes with Bublic Bobtion.

By the way? Thanks, Obama!!

Anyway - I've been trying to avoid the schadenfreude today - as tasty as Republican tears are, it's just a distraction. A petty waste of time. I'd rather celebrate what the American people gained, as opposed to what the Republicans lost...

But then that simpering dumbshit McCain says something so mind-blowingly stupid... it's like Palin rubbed off on... ugh.. I hate that expression. Anyway - the bitter old fool said:

THIS MIND-BLOWINGLY STUPID THING

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

"Geoff that was not the case. It was just just a run of the mill accident. But my mother did not have insurance and the other woman did. "

I'm sorry but the laws in my country are the same. You need to have insurance in order to legally drive the car, and if you drive illegally, for whatever reason, you're automatically presumed to be at fault.

And quite frankly, if you don't have insurance, you shouldn't drive anyway. Driving is risky at the best of times, and that insurance is there not just to protect the driver financially but to protect people whose cars they might accidentally damage. Not having insurance is reckless, inconsiderate and illegal, and for that your mother needed to be held accountable.

Now, certainly if the other driver had been driving drunk or had purposefully driven into your mother's car, that would certainly be worse, but in a regular fenderbender, factually proven reckless behaviour (like driving without insurance) tips the scale when there are  conflicting opinions as to who was at fault.