Reply #140: Or yours. Hi, roody. You need a point. People are under-insured in

[saltpoint]

the aggragate in the United States though far less so in other countries' system.

Coverage differs except that there is clear understanding that greed, not service to others, drives U.S. health insurers.

Wellpoint. United Behavioral Health. CBC. Aetna. Anthem. Unity. WPS. You know the list.

Now add the equally cash-driven index of Big Pharma.

Ralph Nader's piece cited in the OP is in fact admirably on target and simultaneously inaudible in the public debate.

Nader is not a player.

He has not been a player since his UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED days, IMO. He is intelligent, occasionally bold, in and of himself admirable, but like anyone else, quite full of contradictions. The more political he became, the less pure his argument shone. That's what politics does. That's what it is. He's not the only one and therefore can't be singled out. But he is one, and the moment he takes Republican bucks to subvert the party of Robert F. Kennedy and Barbara Jordan, he is, in the estimation of this observer, a renegade asshole.

He should have set his sights more reasonably and cogently; moved from DC to Maryland or Virginia; sought public office with grassroots support and organization; built a national network around the principled efforts he'd made as a consumer advocate and attorney; and then gone for a gubernatorial run or U.S. Senate seat a while down the line.

He didn't.