Oh Andy...

Haven't we been through this before?

I actually believe that getting rid of free-riders in an already-socialized system is a good, conservative idea, as once did Gingrich and Romney. So sue me.

The lawsuits are ongoing already.
If you can't afford your expensive (some would say, self-incurred) medical needs without bringing forcing healthy, younger others into the pool to pay your bills (you surely don't think what you pay in premiums is covering the cost of the care you're taking out of the American system, do you?), don't cry to me.

Free-riders, by definition, take more than they give.
If young healthy people don't incur outstanding medical bills that they can't pay for and push onto the state, they're not the free-riders.

Look in the mirror Andrew, if you dare.
There's the problem with the way the "private" healthcare insurance system in America is set up. And I don't see you running back to the old country, where you'd be guaranteed HIV treatment in their healthcare system.

Don't pretend that young people free ride, just because the costs of our most medically vulnerable aren't incurred by people with wealth like yours. You want ... to have your cake and eat it too. To participate in a medically risky lifestyle, and then when you ... "lose", to keep your wealth and push your financial medical costs onto innocent bystanders. With no outstanding medical bills of our own.

That's the definition of a free-rider. Just like somebody who smokes, gets popped for it, and then pays ... his lawyers to get him some special treatment under the law, shouldn't be preaching to the rest of us about the way the American legal system works, or not.*

Why not curtail some of your lifestyle needs (2 homes, right? sell one?) and instead take the bulk of your earned wealth to pay for the bulk of your earned medical care. You know ... yourself. Without asking forcing American young people to bail you out on the health front.

That would make you both fiscally conservative (taking care of your own needs first) and a bit more independent. C'mon ... let the young, still healthy ones teach you how it's done. How to minimize your health risks, so you don't incur needless treatment bills. All in the prioritizing, and lifestyle values, friend.


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Andrew M. Sullivan, the British author, editor, and political commentator, is one of the best-known figures in the new-media elite, and his blog, The Daily Dish, is among the most popular on the Web. But a federal judge says Sullivan did not deserve preferential treatment from prosecutors who dropped a marijuana possession charge after the journalist was recently caught smoking a joint on a federally owned beach on Cape Cod.

In a strongly worded memorandum issued Thursday, US Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings said the decision by Acting US Attorney Michael K. Loucks to dismiss a federal misdemeanor possession charge against Sullivan flouted a “cardinal principle of our legal system’’ - that all persons stand equal before the law.

Three other defendants charged with the same offense had to appear before Collings the same day as Sullivan, the judge noted. But Sullivan’s case was the only one prosecutors did not pursue, out of concern that the $125 fine carried by the relatively minor offense could derail his US immigration application.

“It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances,’’ Collings wrote in the 11-page memorandum, adding that prosecutors’ rationale for the dismissal was inadequate.

Collings added with obvious irritation that he had no power to order prosecutors to pursue the case, and granted their motion to dismiss it. The fact that he did, however, “does not require the Court to believe that the end result is a just one,’’ he wrote.