Our health system's failure creates an annual  101,000 more deaths than if we had a health system like , say, Australia.

In today's FT Nicholas Timmins (no link at the FT's request-but go to FT.com and search for Global Insight/Nicholas Timmins) quotes  a study by-among others- Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showing that for deaths under the age of 75 from diseases that are treatable  the US has the worst record among the top 19 industrialized counries. And if we performed as well as not only Australia but also France and Japan we'd have  101,000 fewer deaths per year.

And of course in many of those 19 countries-the UK for example-if you don't like the National Health Service you can go to a private physician whose rates will be much lower than those here since the NHS is not mandatory. It's a public option.holding down the rates of those private physicians.

Not an accident. Nye Bevan designed it that way - see Michael Foot's Biography of Bevan.Bevan's approach , unlike our's at present, was to produce the bill first and argue about it later.Pretty much in line with the poker mantra " You can't beat something with nothing".Faced with a clear understanding of what would happen if they sat on their hands the British medical establishment presented sensible compromises to Bevan which he took to Parliament.

And it works. It's worked for me. It's worked for various members of my family who've lived in the UK for the last 20 years.It worked least well for the first ten of those years when Margaret Thatcher attempted to destroy it by creating the long waiting lists which she then pointed to as evidence of its failings- and which have been essentially eliminated by the Blair/Brown Labour Party.But live on among the right wing here.

Robert Reich asks today , why the anger? And answers : Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

Maybe . Or maybe the Astroturfers and the broadcast demagogues are exploiting a condition rather than causing it. All societies contain a quota of the deeply unhappy  waiting for the: Day of the Locusts. Now add Joe (usually)Lunchpail, in the millions, staring at the TV , waiting for foreclosure , deeply humiliated in his own eyes  at what he sees as his failure  to support his famiily, .

Sure they're responding to Rush and Steele. If McCain were in office they'd be responding to Josh and Adriana.  They want to hate somebody and are just waiting to be told whom that is.

The solution? To accept there is no solution. For the time being. Obama has to just keep on keeping on. And we need to cease blaming him because he can't make the sun rise in the west.

He may well be a one term president. All the more reason why he;s got to get  Health Care through .Not because  otherwise he will have "wasted a crisis". But because every year, month, week,day   until we have Health Care people in their thousands  will be suffering because of its absence.

AOBTW if that means John Yoo escapes his deeply deserved disbarment, and the Drug companies get a free-er than-it-should- be ride, so be it.Every sled needs ten huskies. And  a puppy that can be thrown to the wolves.

On NPR's Talk of the Nation,today, Sekulow said the following:

o End of life care is a major contributor to US health care costs

o One of the prime objectives of the draft Health Care Bill is control of health care costs

o That draft requires physicians to provide formal end of life counselling

o And to report their results to a Government panel

o Therefore it follows that the Government will require that in end of life counselling physcians should urge an early death

This is an attorney talking? Doesn't that same logic mean that the Government will require surgeons to botch operations?A new medical standard:first do Harm. 

He went essentially  unrefuted. The host probed his assertion once and Sekulow repeated that since cost control was a major objective of the bill it must be the case that the Government will pressure physicians to speed the elderly on their way.The other guest , a physician, tried a couple of times to rebutt Sekulow , who asked not to be interrupted and  when the other guest tried again the host instead took questions.

NPR sometimes compliments itself on its "drive way moments"- when the listener stays in the car to hear the conclusion of a segment. For me this was a "drive way moment" as I shouted at the radio :"Ask Sekulow if he means that all doctors will be pressured to kill their patients".

I understand that the hosts have their hands full.Where was TOTN's support team? Why didn't they prompt the obvious question.

Oh, well.