I know Gawker is just a gossip site and we shouldn’t get exercised about the contents, but when I saw this post – Robert De Niro Reminds Us That Nationalized Health Care Is An Important Issue – I had to take a look and immediately smelled a rat. The Gawkies opine as follows:

Robert De Niro is just like us-he has problems with his health care provider! De Niro won his case against the Fireman’s Fund Insurance, which had sued the actor, alleging that he had withheld information about his medical condition. Fireman’s Fund had to cover costs when a prostate cancer scare delayed filming for the De Niro vehicle Hide and Seek blah blah blah. But why is Robert De Niro, a very famous actor, having these middle class problems with his regular-people insurance company? There’s no national health care.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!… His “health care provider?” Now, come on, Gawker, I know you’re not into the political thing – bad for advertising and all that – but you should be into showbiz. That wasn’t to do with poor Bobby’s health insurance. He has that through the Screen Actor’s Guild, just as I do through the Writers Guild. That was on set insurance that movie company’s take out in case the film’s star goes down with some illness during production and the company is out of pocket 200K a day while everyone cools their heels. Get the difference? I have no idea whether De Niro disclosed his prostate condition during the pre-shooting checkup (yes, they have those), but this has about as much to do with national health insurance as Gawker does with boolean algebra (or whatever else you want to fill in).