I love the fact that the 2008 Presidential race started about a year ago. There’s just that much more time to watch a few dozen egomaniacs stumble, bumble and fall on their way to the most thankless job in the world. I haven’t made a choice yet, to be honest there’s no one compelling enough to get behind. I can almost guarantee that it will be one of the twenty-odd Democrats, however. There are several very good reasons for this, but one of the biggies for me is health care.

I haven’t been watching the half dozen or so party debates that we’ve had so far, not that big a masochist. But one thing I know from the coverage is that the Republicans aren’t even acknowledging the idea that the health care system in the US is broken. In fact, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani don’t even list health care as an issue on their campaign websites. The talk radio whack jobs just brush off any discussion of health care reform as “socialized medicine” and talk about how American health care is the best in the world.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I know that the US ranks 23rd in infant mortality, 20th in male life expectancy and 21st in female life expectancy. I know that 48 million Americans, or nearly 1 in 6, don’t have health insurance. I was one of them for most of my adult life. I know that it would cost us $6,000 – $14,000 for Baby DVD to be born in the States. I know that there are great research hospitals and great doctors in the US, but a lot of people can’t afford to make use of them. And I know that insurance companies dictate the quality of care that people receive.

In Britain, as in most industrialized countries in the world, medical coverage is guaranteed at little or no cost to all residents. From my own experience this single payer universal health care works very well. This is how:

1. I feel sick.

2. I phone the doctor.

3. Often the same day, always within a couple of days, I go to the doctor and get treated.

4. I am given a prescription, I go to the pharmacy to collect it. It costs me £6, no matter what the prescription.

That is all. No insurance companies, no bills. There are not long waits. The quality of service is excellent. I have had minor surgery in Britain which I neither had to wait for nor pay anything for. Baby DVD will come into this world with no cost to us. There are exceptions, which are usually published in the tabloids and then picked up by Fox News and talk radio. But in general the British National Health Service is an excellent, well run organization.

Now, this of course, costs money. I pay about 30% of my income in taxes. But I personally have no problem paying that level of tax when I consider what services I receive. My last year in the States I paid nearly that level of tax and was largely paying for a botched war in the Middle East. As human beings we should really have enough compassion to be willing to pay a little extra to make sure that people less fortunate than I can go to the hospital and have their lives saved. You don’t hear a lot about universal health care from the right to life crowd, however.

I don’t mean for this to be preachy, but the press leading up to Michael Moore’s new documentary “Sicko” has got me thinking about it. Now, I am not naive enough to think that anything dramatic will happen with the health care problem in the States. One just has to do the math. It will probably cost about $250 million to win the presidential election in 2008. I don’t think you get to that kind of money without taking something from insurance companies, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies. Politicians tend not to bite the hand that feeds them, but at least some of the Democrats acknowledge its a problem. Here is an article detailing the top three candidates skeletal plans. Who know, maybe congress will do something about it. They’ve done a bang up job on fixing Iraq.

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