1. The whole thing is about a weird corner of the economy. Goldman Sachs is a speculator, and their customers are speculators. I'm certainly against fraud and market manipulation, but the people who lost money fair and square speculating on dot-com IPOs aren't going to keep me up at night.

2. Even as slanted as the article is, one theme keeps emerging from it: government failure. It loosened commodities regulations, it failed to impose meaningful fines on corporate abuses, it implemented policies to encourage wider homeownership that helped fuel the housing bubble. Absurdly, the author tries to blame Goldman for lobbying for these changes, as if maintaining a balanced regulatory structure were Goldman's job rather than the government's. Congress acted to loosen rules on default swaps trades, but Congress shouldn't be held responsible because the Treasury department lobbied them. But Treasury shouldn't be held responsible because it was run by Robert Rubin, who had come from Goldman Sachs. It's Goldman's fault, you see?

3. In all these examples, within just a few years inflated asset values are corrected, fraud punished and stopped. In the grand scheme of things that's pretty darn quick. How long has the drug war been with us?

4. The millions pocketed by executives of insolvent financial firms makes my blood boil too, and I'd like to see more downward pressure on those bonuses. But I'd rather we optimize the system toward helping the many forward rather than holding the few back, so the few thousand people getting more than they deserve are a distraction from the real question: what best serves the many? A government-heavy system that betrays the interests of the many whenever the few come a-lobbying is the wrong answer.

However, in the case of health care REIMBURSEMENT (remember, we're not talking about government doctors or hospitals), government already covers more people than any insurance company, or all of them combined. This isn't an experiment; there are decades of data from all over the world that single payer health care for all works, works at least as well as our system and for much lower cost.

Heehee, Scottish golf nut. Love it (I don't golf, but do like Scotch). I don't think I'm off base in characterizing your opposition to a public option as a preference for the current model. You have suggested HSAs as a solution and that patients can bring down costs by negotiating prices with providers, but I consider that unrealistic. Besides, it requires coverage for catastrophic or emergency spending beyond what's in the HSA, which must be provided either by the predatory insurance industry or the government, which choice I would leave to each individual American. As for spending a lot of time finding private health care options in Europe, it took seconds on the Google.

I'm sorry you feel I'm being unreasonable, but here's the honest truth: the notion that government marshals innovation, customer focus, or cost accountability comparable to private industry simply goes against my experience. I'm used to lines at the DMV, security theater from TSA, an absurd tax code, an FAA that will be taking 50 years to upgrade its computer systems, a drug war that has brought decades of failure at the expense of our most disadvantaged citizens but can't be stopped, legislation that reliably sells out the public interest (to the extent such a thing exists) for one interest group or another, a space agency that blows things up, a state government that is now minting its own currency (the IOU), a city government that spends money so foolishly it has to pass bond measures to find the cash to fix potholes, school systems that live at the mercy of teachers' unions and turn out students that can't read…doo dah, doo dah.

I could go on and on, but what frosts me the most is that while companies are held to account by courts, consumers, and ultimately accountants, government is basically not accountable. Books need not balance, policies need not work. Politicians' jobs depend entirely on the sound bites by which voters judge them, not on genuine results.

You're welcome to call this bias, but it feels to me like simple data points. I used to work for the federal government perhaps that was my first mistake. You seem to have a different experience of government; perhaps you're from Canada?

As for the rest of your post, well, I can't help you out. You've managed to interpret “our health care system [is] too expensive, leaves too many people uncovered, and…needs reform” as “Dr J is claiming there's no problem.” And you've brought up insurance yet again, as if I'd said something about it, or as if medical related bankruptcy was caused by insurance bills. Perhaps you're one of those Chinese contortionist chicks I saw in the Cirque du Soleil?

Actually based on your photo, my money is on you being a Scottish golf nut. You're probably peeved that I'm casting aspersions on the Hebrides. Sorry about that.

Here's a CNBC video on a European conference on health care innovation. http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=113525383...
Unfortunately, since “socialized medicine” kills innovation, they didn't have anything to talk about. Just kidding of course. How arrogant Americans are to think they are the only innovators because of the profit motive. Open heart surgery, heart transplants, lasik and lots of other cutting edge medical breakthroughs happened not here, because of profit motive, but abroad because just like here, doctors (maybe Dr. J excluded?) are dedicated to advancing the practice of medicine because they happen to like using their brains and skills to advance their field, medicine.

*plus any other similar program, and if needed boosted to make up for shortcomings in the programs.

And since your objection didn't quite speak to my point, let me repeat it. The advantage I don't want to lose is not the clinic but the ability to invent a new kind of clinic. Please show me a socialized system that can do that.

actually, private clinics and hospitals are available in “socialized systems”. So is private insurance.

Choices are valuable. People put different values on money, quality, and time, and a system that's always free but often slow isn't the right answer for everyone all the time. I see a ton of benefit in giving people more than one choice, and in having a system that's free to invent new choices. I don't want to lose these things.

The retail health clinics are an interesting example of companies inventing new ways to give consumers cheaper, simpler, faster choices. The clinics cut into the doctors' 200-bucks-for-10-minutes business, so the AMA is predictably negative on them. They're not a cure-all, but they're a useful option, and one that could never be invented in a socialized system.

I've had years of experience with the so-called conservative viewpoint and consider it classist and elitist, Wall St vs. Main St, corrupt big business running everything for their profit and the GOP lap dogs lapping it up.

To the point about “bipartisanship” I hope the Dems use the reconciliation process so a majority is enough. Screw this “super majority rule”. It's a recipe for stalemate and stagnation. The party of NO will not let anything get done at all because they want Obama to fail, meaning they want him to be unable to deal with any of our pressing issues so he'll appear ineffective. Enough of their obstruction.