The function of Jackson's article is the same as the function of the other one. "Look at how evil the private sector is. Let's go socialist. After all, there's no evil or greed in nations where the government runs everything."

There are no overall totals, no links in the article. No background or context, or even a consistent time frame to come up with some kind of annual number. Just a Maddow-style spewing of disconnected numbers designed to create a deep impression of waste and fraud in impressionable minds. In those whose minds are really soft and mushy, the idea is supposed to form that if you just weren't paying all these bastards so much money, they could give millions of people health care or something.

Of course, less impressionable people might start doing some math.

Here's a little food for thought: Medicare fraud alone in 2010, $48 billion, was about four times the total profits of the major health insurance companies combined in that year.

Add up all the money going to evil CEOs in that article, some over several years, and multiply by 10 just for fun, and you get about $2.5 billion. About 5 percent of what Medicare loses just in fraud.

More perspective here.

And I don't expect you to make this connection, but I recall some people who were really, really convinced a week or so ago that just because a system is badly losing money doesn't mean we should be cutting back salaries or retirement benefits. You want some fun, take that $2.5 billion in CEO greed that I pulled out of my arse and compare it to the unfunded pension liabilities in, say, just California.