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Now welcome to the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast with clips today from NPR,

The Rachel Maddo Show, The Young Turks, Counter-Spin, The Onion Radio News,

The Black Martini Club Podcast, The Progressive Magazine, The Colbert Report,

Countdown, and The Daily Show.

As the debate over healthcare rages, commentator Brian Unger says the back and forth is getting toxic.

It's revealing a lot about us as a nation and not the good stuff.

It feels embarrassing, like the whole world can see our underpants, or here as fighting in the kitchen.

First, most of us can't describe accurately the details of the healthcare reform now under debate.

That makes us look stupid, or too busy to care.

Second, most of us can't describe accurately the healthcare or insurance we currently have,

so that makes us look kind of stupid too, or lazy.

Some of us don't care about people who don't have health insurance,

so that makes us seem unsympathetic or super lucky.

Most of us don't understand that we're already paying for people who don't have healthcare,

which makes us too busy to care, in denial, or merely rich.

Some of us, a lot of us, already receive healthcare under some form of government plan,

but don't believe in healthcare under some form of government plan.

That makes us hypocritical, or selfish.

In some camps, I hear that makes us patriotic.

We're having an identity crisis when it comes to caring about the nation's health,

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