He's as mad as a bloody march hare, M.J., how can you read him?

Are you saying that crank is the smartest guy, is that the point? He has got emotional and/or psychological problems that are only partly created by stress over his awareness that he is a marine-iguana lookalike. Unhinged, he would be happier full-time at Fox whom he worships as he says http://www.google.com/search?q=krauthammer+fox&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIT_en (and they do already hire him to spew his maniacal invective part time), or more preferably as a plotter in some hate group.

My Tricare coverage has mandatory prostate exams start at 45 years of age and mandatory heart exams starting at 40 years of age. Periodic health assessments are yearly at any age. This is all at cost to the government under my outstanding military medical coverage.

So my question is: Why does Krauthammer hate the troops?

GOP Motto: Save the Insurance Companies,Kill the People.

I guess to Krauthammer, Israelis receiving preventive care is another story altogether.

Mammograms are screening and detection procedures; they aren't preventive care, in the sense that (unlike, say, blood pressure tests) there really aren't preventive (behavioral) changes you can make based on them. The idea is that early detection allows early treatment and therefore more favorable outcomes for the patient, probably at lower cost than treating a metastatic cancer.

Blood pressure and blood sugar testing are really preventive in the sense that one could change diet and increase exercise based on the results and prevent or at least mitigate serious disease.

Krauthammr is a mean-spirited crank nonetheless. Don't know if this was his error or MJ's.

MJ, FAR be it from me to defend CK in any way, but I read the piece, and he did NOT say this:

"I just want to note that the smartest guy the right has actually believes that saving lives by preventing disease is a cost society should not view as paramount."

All he says is that prevention won't cut costs, but will increase them. And he gives his reasons, which may be right or wrong; I don't know. Here are some other things he DID say:

"This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense. Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That's the whole premise of medicine. Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.

However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health-care costs."

Here he actually comes out FOR prevention. He also calls it a "wondrous good." Now, I guess you could say that by arguing that prevention costs more than curing disease, he's dissuading society from putting an emphasis on prevention by saying it will cost us a lot more. But it's not clear that he is.

If prevention DOES cost a lot more, shouldn't we know that? That would at least allow us to plan for it and show us what to expect.

I'm afraid Krauthead uses the same analogy product manufacturers use when figuring out how much liabilities from their products would cost relative fixing it so they won't incur any. Cost is what has the health system in this situation in the first place. Single payer similar to Medicare would eliminate insurance companies who are the propagators of what we have now and it isn't worth a sh!t. The President should tell Congress to pass a bill, using Reconciliation as the Republicans did effectively, and get a bill with ALL the bells and whistles they can stuff in it. The more in it, the more difficult it will be to strip it when it is successful and the Republicans regain the Congress. I hope not in my lifetime!