Eric Alterman lost his cool and said he'd be happy if Rush Limbaugh went deaf. Not his finest hour, but he has apologized (scroll down). (People should still buy his book What Liberal Media?)

Thinking about Rush's hearing reminded me that I meant to post a link to this column by Terry Golway. Golway, bored while driving recently, punched up Rush Limbaugh on the car radio. He writes:

As I don’t get a chance to listen to daytime radio, I can’t say I’m familiar with the civic culture of Limbaugh nation. So I was mildly surprised to hear that nation’s maximum leader carrying on about the stupidity of health insurance and the admirable but regrettably forgotten custom of simply paying Yankee dollars in exchange for services rendered. After all, Mr. Limbaugh told us, that’s what he does when he visits the doctor! Why, he has two or three or four (he can’t keep count!) health-insurance plans, including one foisted upon him by the union of radio blowhards, but he never uses these plans because he pays cash money for his medical needs. What a great nation we would be if only we were all like him! What kind of crypto-Euro-socialists have we become, that we rely on insurance companies to help pay for services we need?

So Did Rush pay cash, or write checks, for all the expenses related to his recent cochlear implant surgery?

And, more important, does he seriously believe that ordinary citizens -- people who, unlike him, don't make tens of millions of dollars a year -- should do the same if they (or their children) have cochlear implant surgery? This procedure and the follow-up cost a lot -- the estimates I found range from $30,000 to $62,000. Does Limbaugh truly believe that ordinary people can just pay for major surgery out of petty cash?