Your example could hardly better contradict your point:
Universal healthcare in the UK (the NHS) was implemented nationwide in about 3 years, covering 50million people with comprehensive and free healthcare (give or take a modest prescription fee at the time). It replaced a complex network of private, state (county) and charity organizations, and came up against bitter opposition from the vested interests in private healthcare at the time. It has its limitation, but public support for it is consistently very strong.

I appreciate your point on IT systems is probably true, and this project is clearly a disaster - but expanding it to general provision of healthcare ignores every functional single-payer system in the world.

"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day"

You can tell the Roadster served it's purpose because "Besides building its own cars, Tesla has a business partnership with Toyota Motor Co (TM) to produce a plug-in electric version of the RAV4 SUV and a deal with Daimler (DDAIF) to provide batteries for an electric version of the Smart ForTwo minicar."

That's Toyota, developer of the Prius, admitting that Tesla have technology and know-how that they need. That's what the Roadster bought Tesla.

Well, I don't think anyone knows yet, but the 'medication schedule' reference probably refers to this comment hanging off this Yahoo News article that I personally found pretty convincing (sorry - I don't know how to link to the comment directly, but it's from 'John')
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110329/ts_yblog_thelookout/fbi-asks-public-for-help-breaking-encrypted-notes-tied-to-1999-murder#mwpphu-container

I checked out the reference (since removed, oddly) that people who are bipolar often keep long-term records of medication schedules and effects (page 2) and historic record of major 'episodes' (page 1) so that they can use them to try and build a personalized medication schedule over time on a bipolar support forum, and it checks out. It's also true that people with bipolar disorder are encouraged to keep them secret, and so would be like to keep coded versions of these notes in case they were found.

----
(from the comment - 'John')

It is a shorthand log of historic episodes in the mid seventies on (page 1, actually written second, but numbered one to keep events in chrono order) and medications taken with the effects listed. The key at the end is day week month year morning day latenight. It was started on page 2 and then page 1 was added as a log of the earlier childhood which is the basis for diagnosis and the "page 2" is indepth records of changes in meds. The 3 month periods are normal with bipolar episodes in the 4th QTR (September through December in the seventies. These seasons suggest seasonal disorder.

ALPNTE GLSE-SE ERTE

A: Latenight, Phenergan, taken in evening G: Latenight Serenace/Seroquel or Seroquel/Serenace Extended Release Taken Evening

VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE
V: Late Serenace Morning take Serenace

On page 1 are lists of manic episodes

(FLRSEPRSEONDE71NCBE)

From late september really severe episode on December 1971: No cause before episode
(CDNSEPRSEONSF/DE74NCBE)

Chronic Depression in September, really severe episode on the start of December in 1974, no cause before episode

26MLSE74SPRKSE29KENOSOLE173R7RSE

2x 6mg Serenace in 1974 or 2x 600mg Seroquel in 1974
99-84.B2UNEPLSENCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE

1999 through 1988
NSREOUSEPUTSEWLDUCBE(3XORL)

D-W-M-YH/MD/IL XDRLX
Day weekday month year: morning day or latenight

--- (further comment from 'John')
I'm bipolar and we are told to keep such logs in short-hand because, though we are protected by laws, we are told to stay in the closet, because so many violent crimes are caused by bipolars. If we just came out of the closet, people might realize that those of us who are medicated are fully functional and safe. And we are 2 to 10 % of the population, possibly from recent environmental and stress related aggrevators. But it does take very detailed traking to get our medication right and knowing the triggers is key: week days might relate to work triggers, months to seasonal disorder and times of day are critical to knowing when to take meds and how much. The nature of this note suggests that he is having an episode and is thinking faster than he can write.

...and I say thank all that's holy for that. Anything that keeps airplanes as the one place that I'm not going to be bothered by "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" or disturbingly personal/intimate conversations of total strangers is entirely welcome to me. Give me one refuge from connectivity, please, just one.

Someone mod this up: I noticed this too and it pretty much means it has to be a fake.

Thanks for FTFM. The quotes around 'grand jury' were, I guess, me admitting that I don't know what one is. It still seems like a broad fishing expedition in the hope of finding a charge to hang on Wikileaks, but I guess that's justified if they find that a real crime was committed by them.

nb. you only get to call me an ass when it's shown that Wikileaks 'conspired' with Manning, which would be stupid on their part. I'm betting they weren't that dumb, since that seems to have been anticipated in the way they configured the whole operation.

Yeah, that's great. It's just the 'bad people' that they're after: including an Icelandic MP. Considering this whole 'grand jury' process is going on in secret, why should we be confident that there's a due process behind deciding whose IP addresses are being fished out of Twitter?

I mean, call me an ass when I'm proved wrong, but the whole point of Wikileaks is that you have a drop-box to leak documents, but it's clean hands from the other side. They don't 'conspire,' they just receive the stuff and publish it. It's pretty open what they do and how. They're just desperate to pin a crime to pin a crime on Julian and his buddies, because that Espionage Act law is looking like weak beer.

I'll raise you one: and why shouldn't China be in 'the center of the world'? America doesn't have a god-given right to be 'top country', just as Great Britain didn't before it, or even Italy or Greece before them. The economic rise of America didn't require the subjugation of Great Britain - our economies and interests are too closely interlinked.

The ways things currently are, China's prosperity is reliant on Americas well-being, too - they own too much American debt to want America to tank. Why do people assume other people doing well is an existential threat of some sort. Looks at all the countries 'behind' America that do perfectly well: the Sweden's, Switzerland's, Singapore's of the world.

The 20th century was America's century, but change is a constant.

"However, Assange is NOT a journalist. Journalists are supposed to have a sense of responsibility."
That's an interesting distinction. How would you legislate for that? A "sense of responsibility test"? Only people who pass this can publish without fear of conviction?
I'd rather say that anyone publishing is protected as a journalist, and people who have secrets should learn to do a better job of keeping them.

One of Wikileaks biggest problems is their name: they aren't actually *leaking* anything - they are publishing other people's leaks. Leaking is legally dubious, but publishing is protected by the concepts like Freedom of the Press in many countries. Calling yourself FooLeaks implies that you commit some kind of crime for a living.

According a Guardian report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks
Over 3 MILLION people have access to this private network. The big story to me is that if this material is really significant, why is the US so incredibly bad at keeping it secret?

Wikileaks is not some kind of 'superspy' organization with resources and techniques beyond the imagining of say, a moderately competent nation state. If they could get full access to this 'damaging' information, then I find it hard to imagine that China, Russia, France and most of the western world couldn't either.

Either this is really sensitive material and this is a wake up call that giving 3 million people access to a sensitive database is a poor strategy, or it's not that damaging anyway and the US foresaw this possibility and thought the risk/damage was acceptable.

If you want an even more amazing view of Stonehenge, here's a visiting tip that doesn't seem to be that well known - if you plan ahead and fill out this form:
http://bit.ly/bYertb ...you can get inside the ropes and get within touching distance of the stones at sunrise. You get the place pretty much to yourself *and* the major road running right by the site is completely empty. It's a genuinely humbling experience and you can get views like this.
http://bit.ly/dxPWXE
Yeah, go ahead and write me, English Heritage.
(although I still feel bad about the moment I found I was accidentally standing on a halfburied lintel.)

"While our data doesn't identify which broken screens resulted from dirt trapped behind a slide case, at least a quarter of the broken glass claims involved the back screen."
"Back screen"? "At least a quarter"?
I'm with Mr Anonymous Coward on this, even if he did use the word "fucktard"