This week's PostSecret favorite

Another take on healthcare reform

I'm on a few email lists which deal with medical billing and payment issues. Most of the time, we're discussing the nuts and bolts of how to bill and how to get paid. Occasionally, we detour to more broadbased, policy discussions which can get pretty heated since,like the country, we are representative of every political persuasion.

Recently, a dyed in the wool Texas Republican initiated a discussion of healthcare reform with a complaint about a specific portion of one of the proposed bills. Below is the response of another more liberal (centrist by his own description) list member which I found compelling. Since it was published to a public email list, I trust that I'm not violating any Internet protocol by reprinting it here:

I haven't replied till now because I have a business to run and long threads on three different lists are not compatible with that. Now that we both have our rants done with, my friend, we can talk about this in a less humorous and satirical way. As I said in my initial response, "we need to really look at this issue as citizens of a democratic republic, take a deep breath and find out enough about all the issues (not just what I'd like or what you'd like) and voice our opinion with suggestions to make reform as reasonable and fair as possible for as many people as possible. Maybe we will need to recall or not vote for some folks. Maybe we need to realize that getting the same amount of money back from the Feds as we put in in taxes is not the way a united country works for the best of all citizens."

Let me set my parameters. Sociologists generally refer to the middle class economically as those making between $30,000 to $80,000 per year. Those making above that amount (to about $150,000) are either upper middle class or considered lower upper class (see any text on social class). The most recent reliable poll I have(from Kaiser, one of those who sit on the fence because of their insurance connections and confirmed by POLE from St. Norbert's College) is that 56% of Americans want health care fixed now and believe they and the country will be better off. Interestingly enough, the figures of those folks go up to the 70% - 80% when limiting the responses to the economic middle class. Further, 60% want a public plan. I understand we differ in politics. I tend to vote centrist but can look at and adopt policies and stands from both right and left. That tends to make me unpopular with the folks from either the conservative or liberal side. One final thought, I never ever trust the Lewin Group for anything. Their track record as objective, accurate predictors and as being reliable is somewhat worse than that of the pharmaceutical research and besides they are owned by United Health Care (such a reliable group:-0)

Let's talk about what you said. "It does no good for either of us to rant about what damage the previous presidents did." I see that you do not choose to include Obama in the category of those who should not be flamed. The president inherited an economy just shy of complete chaos and depression (from one of the past presidents you want to exclude from consideration). He and his administration had to spend their initial time cleaning up after George which makes George part of the problem. Obama and his administration have passed stimulus bills and aids in a few months that seem to be working, if slowly. The successful idea was called "priming the pump" when Roosevelt did it. Obama has had only 6 months to fix George's problem, the financial crisis and health care. That's the same sort of thing that took President Franklin Roosevelt over 8 years and a war. We might note from a historical perspective that both Obama and Roosevelt inherited their disasters from Republicans. Both recoveries took a huge amount of money and some serious Supreme Court issues. This is no different.

I did point out before that no matter what, you do have 3 choices, join a plan, keep the plan you have or after taking what consequences may be put into a final law, drop out completely and put your premium in the bank or under the bed. But those choices do not exist now because we do not have a law. Odds are they may not exist by the time the Senate gets done with its input. What we have is a proposal or actually a couple of proposals still being negotiated. Discussion on the various points is good. If you want to make a change, get to DC and talk to folks or do so on the phone, by fax, e-mail or whatever. That is the way of the democratic republic that I swore an oath to when I went into the Army.

Now someone asked why are we in such a hurry. We can do nothing to change this growing economic and health disaster at a cost of roughly 10 times what it will cost us to change. As a nation, we have been fighting this growing disaster since Reagan and the end of Carter's time. We tried MAC limits and freezes on reimbursement income, DRGs, diddling with details such as requiring CPT and I-9 and tighter regulation. Then we did Mangled care, PPOs and other HMO related delivery systems and gate keeper docs. Then we went to the whole new coding system and tied that to a new ZERO (0) sum reimbursement system called RBRVS. We let ourselves be scared out of change by Harry and Louise and massive lobbying by payors, changed Medicare updates to stricter guidelines, reduced payment regions and other juggling acts, a whole new appeals system, then increased audits, health care saving accounts, etc. till now when we have special audit groups set up to take away cash earned. So we've tried a lot but the problem gets worse and now the problem has become too much for the economy for us to do business as usual.

On top of which (as Business Week noted), there is no real and serious competition in the insurance industry. 94% of the metropolitan areas in this country are controlled by one or two companies. In over 15 states, one payor has 50 % or more of the entire market. Clearly we need the public option, whatever form it takes, to actually get some real free market competition. That is part of why health care reform is needed as part of the economic fix. It might be nice if we could lay back and argue again all the possible and impossible options, But if we do that ,then we truly will be spending ourselves so deep in debt that our grandchildren and their grand hildren will be paying for it. Denying the problem and setting up Obama as a straw man villain doesn't change the facts. We are at a point where it costs us more money to maintain the status quo than it would to change the system. That is why we need to get something passed.

As usual in the U.S., what we pass will not be perfect. Perfection happens in the hereafter, not here. What we will do, however, is amend what we have and pass new stuff to meet whatever we did not hit this time or fight it out in court till it becomes clear and the best we can do. It seems to me that we'd be much further ahead talking to our reps than scaring people by referring to shadows that are not yet incorporated into a single proposal, yet alone a final bill or law.

My thoughts on healthcare reform

Susie said that she wishes I would blog about health care reform.

My problem is that even though I'm a smart person (or at least my test scores and grades would so indicate) and even though I'm experienced (having spent 16+ years directly working in the business side of health care plus the lifetime that I've spent in a physician's family), I don't know what the answer is.

What I do know is that it's time.

I know that whatever we come up with, it's not going to be perfect. But it can't help but be an improvement.

Many people say that they don't trust the government to run healthcare (not that any of the current options propose that government run healthcare). I'll tell you who I don't trust to run healthcare; for profit insurance companies.

I'm worried about what reform will mean to my practice. I'm particularly concerned about paying the bills (mortgage, payroll, etc) if reimbursements for all patients get cut to Medicare rates. It's tough to do business planning in such an uncertain environment.

I don't understand why health insurance needs to continue to be employment based. Do you get your car insurance, your life insurance or your homeowner's (or renter's) insurance through your employer?

I don't understand why group policies and individual policies shouldn't be subject to the same rules regarding underwriting, pre-existing conditions and tax deductibility.

And yet, at this point, as far as I'm concerned, the specific details are far less important than the need to take action now. I completely agree with Obama when he says that in order to fix the economy, we need to fix healthcare. I wish the CBO could assess the 10 year cost of doing nothing because there's no doubt in my mind that it would far exceed the cost of reform.

I say, pass the damn law now and we'll figure it out. Every time I hear that there will be a delay, the pessimist in me thinks that, Obama or no Obama, the do-nothings will prevail and healthcare reform is doomed.

Swayed

I was going to go see The Ugly Truth.

I was also going to go see My Sister's Keeper.

Then Rachel looked up the top critics' aggregation on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Ugly Truth was at 11% and My Sister's Keeper was at 41%.

So we stayed home.

By comparison, Harry Potter was at 86% and Star Trek was at 92%.

And yet, The Proposal and Transformers, both of which I found a pleasant way to pass the time, were rated at 50% and 18% respectively.

Hmmmm.

Another healthcare reform debate snippet

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the proposed healthcare reform would cost a trillion dollars over 10 years.

NPR gave some perspective by pointing out that that's 100 billion dollars a year and that the US is spending a trillion dollars a year on the war in Iraq.

So, for 10% of the cost of the war in Iraq, we can fix healthcare?

The perfect is the enemy of the good

The go-slowers are in fact advocating, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not, no health care reform . . .

Catching up

04/12/09

02/22/09

04/27/09

Away We Go

I liked it.

Rachel wasn't sure.

Funny. But in a thoughtful, delicate way. (I stole the word delicate from the Rolling Stone review because I thought it was perfect.)

Full of characters you're glad you don't know and some you wish you did.

Poignant.

What a beautiful journey . . .

This week's PostSecret favorite

Maybe if she admitted that she likes her job, others would admit that they do too.

This feels like bragging . . .

States Visited - 43 (44 if you count DC)

This is an easy one. Again, you're tagged only if you want to be.

Put an X by the states you have been to. The average is 8; how do you match up?

Should you choose to play, here's what you do:

Copy my note. Click on “notes” under tabs on your profile page. Select "write a new note" in the top right corner. Paste the copy in the body of the note. Delete my Xs and add your own. Change the number at the top, and add your title. Once you've saved, don't forget to tag friends (including me) on the right. Tag the same # of people as the # of states you've been to. Just for fun, put an O beside the states where you have lived.

Alabama - X
Alaska -
Arizona - X
Arkansas -
California - X
Colorado - X O
Connecticut - X
Delaware - X
Florida - X O
Georgia - X
Hawaii - X
Idaho -X
Illinois - X O
Indiana - X
Iowa - X
Kansas -X
Kentucky - X
Louisiana - X
Maine -
Maryland - X O
Massachusetts - X
Michigan - X
Minnesota - X
Mississippi - X
Missouri - X
Montana -X
Nebraska - X
Nevada - X
New Hampshire -
New Jersey - X
New Mexico - X
New York - X
North Carolina - X
North Dakota -
Ohio - X
Oklahoma - X
Oregon -
Pennsylvania - X
Rhode Island - X
South Carolina - X
South Dakota - X
Tennessee - X
Texas - X
Utah - X
Vermont -
Virginia - X
Washington - X
Washington DC - X O
West Virginia - X
Wisconsin - X
Wyoming - X

I'm a sucker for these - Sorry!

BBC Book Inventory

BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other 'Book Nerds'.."

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible (X)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (x)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 7

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 3

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 1 (Wow, am I lame?)

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (x)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein (x)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (x)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)

Total: 6

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)

Total: 5

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (x)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)

Total: 5

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 2

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (x)

Total: 2

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dicken (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 5

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (x)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 4

Grand Total: 40

Hmmmm, I wish I had at least made 50%. I feel like my book geek credentials are in jeopardy . . .

There's something wrong with me

I can't explain it but one of my many quirks that make my husband and daughter shake their heads at me is the pleasure I get out of giving directions to tourists.

I swear, I love to walk around town looking for people struggling with maps in their hands and looking about quizzically. I sidle up to them, say sweetly, "Can I help you find something?" and hope that they don't ask me about something I've never heard of.

Since, it's a small town, that rarely happens and, once I get my bearings, I'm able to quickly point them in the right direction. (Yes, I point them in the right direction. This is not about messing with people.)

I get such a buzz and they're so appreciative.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

The Harry Potter movies face an imposing task. In order to be truly successful, they must satisfy the faithful with their knowledge of the most inconsequential details, retell the story for those who've read the books but forgotten, and present a stand-alone experience for those who haven't read the books (yes, they do exist).

Because I fall in the middle group, it's difficult for me to assess how successful the sixth movie is at accomplishing all of those goals. But, speaking for my constituency, the movie performed admirably. The movie has an overall more ominous tone (these are not the more carefree days of yore) and yet still manages to inject humor and charm. The scene where Ron is under the spell of the love potion is pure frivolity.

Rachel and I both remarked that we're glad we've already read the seventh book, in that we have some insight into where things are headed. But it would also have been interesting to have experienced the movie without that knowledge.

Taking Woodstock by Elliot Tiber

Not for the prudish or homophobic.

But so long as you don't belong to either of those two groups, this book appeals.

Many of the anecdotes beg disbelief and, of course, since most of the players are deceased, there's no real fact checking to be done but Tiber's story is an aspect of Woodstock that hasn't been previously explored.

How and why The Woodstock Music & Art Festival ended up 50 miles from Woodstock is yet another piece in the improbable, nay, impossible event that took place nonetheless.

As a baby boomer who was 7 years old at the time, my knowledge of Woodstock was woefully lacking and Tiber's book is an intriguing, if at times appalling, introduction.

The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike

Um, not so much.

Much more graphic sexually than the original, not as interesting and really just blah.

Updike's last novel and certainly not his best (although what do I know, having only read this one and the Witches of Eastwick?).

Every once in a while, his descriptions caught me up short but for the most part, I was reading for plot, in a hurry to get it over with and find out what happened to the three friends.

If not for the plane ride, I still wouldn't be done with it.

The Museum at Bethel Woods

Wow!

We want to go back.

Bethel isn't really close to anything so it took us a while to get there from Woodstock (1.5 hours) and it took us a while to get from there to the Albany airport (2.5 hours).

Accordingly, we only had a little less than 2 hours in the museum. That wasn't nearly enough.

The museum is well thought out with exhibits about the culture in the country leading up to the summer of 1969, exhibits about the planning stages of the Woodstock Festival and exhibits about the festival itself.

It was fascinating.

Rachel and I knew hardly anything about Woodstock and each piece of information was a revelation. The whole thing was intoxicating.

It was also very cool walking around the field where the stage was, standing there comparing a photo of the field from the weekend of August 15, 1969 with the empty field sprawling in front of us and chatting with the "docent," a tattooed rocker who had actually been there and kept using the collective pronouns, "that's where we did such and such . . . our most common injury was . . ., etc."

We're so glad we went out of our way to see it all. What an added bonus to a fun weekend.

We're looking forward to seeing the movie, Taking Woodstock, when it's released next month. Rachel's already finished the book (which we purchased on Saturday).

This week's PostSecret favorite

on back: I'm glad that I didn't

Woodstock, not Woodstock

The town of Woodstock seems to have a very conflicted relationship with its landmark namesake music event of 40 years ago.

The festival was not held in Woodstock but in Bethel, a good 50 miles and an hour and a half drive away. So, many visitors to the town are simply not where they thought they were going.

Even those who understand the distance are often looking for something the locals aren't sure they want to provide. There are stores which cater to the crowd seeking to recapture that weekend in 1969, with hippie clothing and "tobacco" products. But there are also stores which seem to be studiously avoiding any connection with the eponymous event.

Being one of those in the know, I inquired at the local bookstore about how far Bethel is from Woodstock and the nice woman behind the counter replied, "Well, I've never been there . . ." This was shortly after she made a comment about the troublemakers by the shelves with the Woodstock books (which kept falling to the floor through no fault of the patrons due to the poorly engineered display).

Not being one to be dissuaded by a little negativity and because of the very intriguing trailer we saw on Wednesday for Taking Woodstock, Rachel and I plan to make the hour and a half drive to Bethel tomorrow to see Max Yasgur's farm and to visit the somewhat scorned (at least by some of the residents of Woodstock) Museum at Bethel Woods.

Surprise!

Rachel and I traveled to the Catskills in upstate New York to surprise my maid of honor and Rachel's godmother for her birthday. We drove to Denver last night and then flew to Albany at 6 am this morning. We then drove via Woodstock to Mt. Tremper and the Emerson Resort & Spa.

Shortly after we checked in, Leah figured out we were here. We had a fun reunion and then a lovely dinner at the Phoenix with Leah's family and assorted friends. It was a really relaxed and friendly interconnected web of people gathered together to celebrate 3 July birthdays.

Tomorrow, we're looking forward to a day of hanging out culminating in a birthday barbecue. Tonight we're exhausted.

This week's PostSecret favorite

07/05/2009

Public Enemies

Johnny Depp - plus.

Violent criminal - minus.

Loyal lover/boyfriend - plus.

Alone, betrayed and anachronistic at the end - minus.

Marion Cotillard - plus

Public Enemies is not an easy movie to characterize. It's violent and Dillinger is hardly someone to like. Of course, as portrayed, he has his moments of rakish attractiveness but there's also little illusion regarding his inevitable end.

It's an engrossing eyes wide open look at America's most wanted criminal and the agent who brought him down.

Just say no to Bike Nashbar

I know internet credit card fraud is a common tale but I thought I'd weigh in anyhow.

In checking my bank account online today, I saw a suspicious charge from www.fedgrantusa.com that had just posted. Granted it was only for $7.95 but it was on a debit card that has not been used since last fall. Being the suspicious person that I am, rather than going to the website which might not be secure, I googled it.

Come to find out that there have been loads of consumer complaints regarding this and affiliated websites. Also found out that most people who were hit with these fraudulent charges had done business with Bike Nashbar (as we have) and that Bike Nashbar has acknowledged a security breach. However, Bike Nashbar has been extremely lax about notifying its customers of this breach.

I called the bank, cancelled the debit card, got the charge reversed and found out about a nice service. Wells Fargo offers a free checking account with a free debit card that you can use for internet purchases. You transfer money into the account when you want to make a purchase and otherwise have the account at $0. This is slightly less convenient as you have to transfer funds before you make a purchase and it's hardly foolproof since a fraudulent charge could hit when you've transferred funds for a legitimate purchase but I'm going to give it a try.

Trying not to be

Ok, I admit it. I'm jealous. Trying not to be but not succeeding.

One of the performers spotlighted in Every Little Step, Charlotte D'Amboise, is going to be at Paepcke Auditorium for the screening tonight and is to conduct a Q & A afterwards. I was quite taken with her when we saw the movie last night.

So, not only did we have to put up with the interruptions each time the reel had to be changed (which we all tried to bear in good grace) but we missed out on a personal appearance.

I definitely picked the wrong night on this one . . .

Every Little Step

A Chorus Line was a vivid part of my high school years. It came to Chicago around the time I was a junior and I went downtown to see it. I bought the album which I still have. A high school classmate, a year ahead of me, got hired for the touring company.

When I saw a preview for Every Little Step which the Aspen Filmfest was bringing to Aspen as part of its summer film series, I was immediately interested.

Every Little Step is a documentary which uses the casting of the current revival of A Chorus Line as a vehicle to explore the creation of the original Broadway smash. It is at times touching, heartrending, hilarious, nostalgic and always fascinating. 5 of us went to see it and all 5 came away well-pleased.

Even the technical difficulties which left Paepcke Auditorium with only one projector and Jon Busch scrambling to change reels on that sole projector with as little interruption as possible couldn't dampen our enjoyment of the film. It was actually a novel experience which gave us an opportunity to discuss the film as it was unfolding.

It'll be available in limited release but if it comes to your area and you have the slightest interest in A Chorus Line or in the Broadway audition process, I recommend you see it.

Happy 4th!

Is it just me . . .

or did Sarah Palin seem even odder than normal today?

What the heck?

I wonder what she's trying to get out ahead of . . .

More PostSecret favorites I never got around to sharing

09/06/2008

09/15/2007

09/23/2007

Race and Humor

The Aspen Ideas Festival is ongoing this week and today I attended Race and Humor, which was basically Ta-Nehisi Coates, an author and writer and blogger for the Atlantic, interviewing Larry Wilmore, the Senior Black Correspondent for the Daily Show.

I realize I'm probably in the minority here but I was more acquainted with Coates from his recent interviews on NPR promoting his book which was recently released in paperback than I was with Wilmore of whom honestly I had never heard. Many of you probably already know this but Wilmore's a funny guy. He started his career as a stand up comedian and then moved into writing, starting with In Living Color. He styles himself as a contrarian and is just full of piercing, witty observations.

During the Q&A period, an audience member asked him if he was offended by the ghetto portrayal of the "twins" in Transformers 2. The audience member specifically referenced (and mischaracterized) a line in the movie where the twins said they couldn't read an ancient language. Wilmore's one line response was that he didn't care if a Transformer can't read.

In response to another audience member's question about Dave Chappelle's rationalization for walking away from his TV show and $50 million dollars (that he felt that his mostly white audience was laughing at him, not with him), Wilmore basically said (in a very biting and humorous way) that he thought Chappelle was stupid to walk away from all that money, especially given the fact that Chappelle wrote all his own material and thus had control if he didn't like how people were reacting.

He's written a book of satirical essays, I'd Rather We Got Casinos, that I'd like to read when it comes out in paperback. I'm also going to make an effort to find some of his Daily Show video clips online.

I also had the opportunity to briefly chat with Coates afterwards to tell him how impressed I was with his article on Michelle Obama in the Atlantic.