Researching cheapo light bars I found a post on new Cree LED A19 (standard house size) bulbs. Cree stepped up and have come out with some pretty good offerings. Notable is the 60 watt replacement with a super high color rendition rating at 9.5 watts for ~$20 and a "daylight" version (cooler temp then normal wire bulbs) at 9 watts for ~$12. The color rendition one is more for art museums and other special applications, but at $20 its not too expensive to exclude it. Supposedly they are also assembled in the USA. These compete with the Philips L prize bulb that was pretty much a failure to launch since it sold for ~$35.
The life span is questionable since a few of them have had the globe come loose and a capacitor on the internal board is not rated for much higher temps then what they see in every day use. This makes the cap the most likely point of failure. So far the reviews are good and a google search for failures is pretty sparse.
http://ledsmagazine.com/features/10/4/1
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...-bulb-teardown