Roger Ebert on health care in America and the social contract

Roger Ebert has this amazing thread going on his blog about health care and the social contract from which libertarians believe they are ideologically exempt.

As some of the commenting readers point out, there are three things that make this post and 90% of the (hundreds of) comments worth reading.

1. The representatives of the libertarian point of view are _very_ courteous and well-spoken.

2. Mr. Ebert takes special care to comment on about 2 out of every 5 comments. This is remarkable because blog posters usually throw out a topic and then refrain from participation in or ignore completely any ensuing discussion.

3. The dialog is thoroughly nuanced and very few points of the conversation on health care are left untouched.

It's been hard keeping up with the discussion. There are 472 comments and counting. I'm hoping things don't spiral into decadence by the time I finish reading them all.

Infant mortality rates in the United States

A coworker highly respected for his encyclopedic knowledge of a number of subjects recently contradicted my statement that the US has one of the highest rates if not the highest rate of infant mortality in the western world.

I challenge him or anyone else to dispute the findings of exactly that by the CDC.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm