That's a myth. It "reduced" the bonus, but the bonus clearly still exists. But I love that others think that domain name is no longer relevant for SEO. Keep thinking that. :)
It's reduced to the point of not being worth insane prices for EMDs. The majority of his ranking is likely due to his backlink profile and relevant content vs. the domain. I'm sure it doesn't hurt things though.
Can't speak to "insane prices". But Patrick got AppointmentReminder.org for $8. He classifies it as the best ROI he's ever made.
"cars.com" is still the #1 result for searching "cars". And "business.com" is still on page 1 for searching "business". The death of the EMD has been greatly exaggerated, IMHO.
Yeah, having the name of the company be the same as the top-level keywords makes it so a huge percentage of the backlinks have the anchor text he wants.