"That is the whole point for insurance, so you do not have to pay severe out of pocket expenses."

- and if you can't afford health insurance, you have to pay severe out of pocket expenses with your life? going back to your $30,000 car analogy; your life would be a steep price to pay if dying was the only alternative to replacing your transportation when you've fallen on hard times...very dickensian - a great time to be alive...let's bring back debtor's prisons for the mortgage bums while we're at it:
Debtors' prison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



"Do you honestly believe that by finding some obscure article negates my previous comment that US Treasury Certificates are 100% guaranteed? I cannot understand for the life of me why you would try to argue against this point, or use a worthless article such as the one above as a tool to weaken my original point."

- that article is not obscure...bloomberg is a respected media organization, and i could easily throw up a half dozen links to other media organizations carrying that report...besides, it's a real statistic so dispute the statistic, not the reporter...the risk of default on US treasury notes is at an all time high, even if that high is not as bad as the default risk on countrywide...the point is that there isn't supposed to be ANY risk on us treasury notes, but the media has been reporting about the increasing risk for at least six months:

U.S. Treasuries' debt protection costs jump to record | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

For First Time, Treasury Notes Are Riskier Than German Bunds - March 12, 2008 - The New York Sun