If you actually wanted to reduce health care spending you need to reduce how much we are actually paying for health care products and services. Not only do we spend way more than the rest of the industrialized world on administrative costs, we also pay way more for the exact same drugs and treatments. Forcing people to pay more for their health care out of pocket, i.e. have “skin in the game,” will not fix our problems.

House Republicans left behind eight “conferees” for a conference on the payroll tax/UI/doc fix bill, and plan to hold showy events where they sit in a room alone, but Democrats have adamantly refused to reopen negotiations until the short-term bill passes. Meanwhile, half of the conferees opposed the payroll tax cut extension as recently as a few weeks ago. So far, nobody’s buying the GOP spin.

Despite the heavy lift among evangelical leaders hoping to convince their flocks that Newt Gingrich’s adultery-based serial divorces aren’t misaligned with Family Values and that Newt has earned forgiveness for his bad behavior, GOP primary voters actually have a long modern tradition of nominating wife-abandoners for the Presidency.

Herman Cain suppporters are bitter about the media’s treatment of their preferred candidate and torn between the two remaining GOP front-runners. Mitt Romney looks like a flip-flopping moderate and Gingrich like a faux conservative. Burned by their own candidate’s lack of national campaign experience without previous vetting, why not look at someone not yet in the race, but whom the GOP has relied on before?

Every year the Defense Authorization includes some big controversy. This time it’s provision measure that would mandate indefinite detentions of terrorist suspects in military custody and open the door for those indefinite detentions to extend to US citizens. Mark Udall is trying to strip out that provision.

Leon Panetta has said time and time again since the inking of the debt limit deal that defense cuts at the level of what would be triggered by a Super Committee failure would be disastrous. He did so again at a Congressional hearing today. And we finally got a sense of what that “disaster” would specifically look like, according to Ben Armbruster’s account. Turns out it would mean that US military personnel might not be in every country on Earth. Disaster!

On Wednesday, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona renewed his push for the creation of a temporary Senate committee to investigate WikiLeaks and the hacktivist group Anonymous that would be called the Committee on Cyber Security and Electronic Intelligence Leaks.

John McCain has now signed on for Mitch McConnell’s debt limit plan. I don’t think there’s much doubt that the votes are there in the Senate – even over 60 if someone like Jim DeMint or Rand Paul filibusters – to pass the bill. The House is another matter, as Eric Cantor has gone rogue and is making his leadership play by creating wild demands that nobody will accept. Ultimately, the President still wants a bipartisan deal, but I still think it’s a good bet that the bomb gets defused, one way or another.

It’s Sunday, so that means John McCain is on the teevee — and for once, he pretty much nailed it.

The fact that the Pentagon is handing out “imminent danger” pay to troops working in Libya suggests that “hostilities” are taking place.