Here is a fabulous ACLU movie on ordering a pizza in 2010 and the inherent violations of privacy that will be involved. The’ve got the date for the all the medical data far too early though (most stuff will still be on paper then), and actually most of that data use is banned already–unless it’s really for medical uses. Plus there will not be a national healh plan by 2010, even if most lefty ACLU supporters (like me) would favor that! The risk is far greater that employers and their private health plan agents will be "suggesting" that their employees agree to these restrictions (in fact last week one employer added an extra charge for smokers to their health premium)

But you can see where we’re headed without some real safeguards built in, which is why the Health Privacy Project gang are doing such good work. (Even if I diss them from time to time).

I was somewhat doubtful about the Harris Poll on abstinence last week. (Non)-Volvo-driving, latte-drinking Jonathan Cohn actually knows something about abstinence. Not that I’m sure what that says about Harvard in the early 1990s but here’s what he told me.

Don’t get too used to an unregurgitated Marxist like me saying this, but you should listen to a radio station called 960The Patriot this weekend, as Eric Novack has Alain Enthoven on his show on Sunday from 3-4pm Arizona time. This may be the first time that Eric’s had anyone on who disagrees with him, and I’m looking forward to hearing it. It’ll be in the archives section on Eric’s site later.

Here’s what I wrote about Enthoven and his quarrel with the CDHP crowd.

(I wrote longer wittier stuff in an earlier version of this but Typepad ate it, so I’m giving up for the afternoon. See you Monday!)

Now that I’ve upset every young liberal in America, here’s a blog that I was pointed to by Ezra Klein. It’s called I am Stella, by Kate who is a young health policy wonk in waiting with her own tale of woe of being a patient.  She has a very interesting post on the private vs public cost control issue (although there is a slight flaw in her portrayal that her commenters have noticed–so no cheating before you see what you think).  She also has an excellent post on the Phantoms in the Snow article on cross-border medicine which I was in at the start of, but ducked out of too early to get any credit for….(and which probably improved the credibility of the article!)

Those of you who want to really get into the Canada issue can look here.

Now I’m 42 and never been married, so I don’t agree with most Americans about the very last question on this new Harris/WSJ survey.  But the rest of it shows that we’re a damn site more of a liberal nation than our leaders in DC and on Fox News would have us believe.

On the other hand there is some chance that one day we’ll have universal health insurance, which is not the case for abstinence before marriage, whatever 62% of Americans believe. How many hypocrites are in that number?