Still Sicko

When is any bill better than no bill at all? Not without a public option, it isn't.

I've met enough Americans without any form of health coverage to know it isn't just the kind of people you see jostling against the crime scene tape in The Wire who can't afford an ambulance ride to hospital. There are millions of young, educated people whose jobs don't provide medical insurance - much as their British equivalents might moan about being locked out of a final salary pension scheme - who play a potentially crippling form of medicare roulette every day of their lives.

Sarah Palin is wrong. Socialized medicare isn't evil, putting profit before people's well-being is. It's easy to forget how lucky we are to live in a country with the NHS (and the BBC, though you need to live abroad to really appreciate that). Neither of which would be safe in the hands of the Tories (not that I propose voting for Brown. The choice between the two main parties is currently as enticing as the offer of a shit or a piss to go with your cup of tea).

Obama is shaping up to be another Bill Clinton, without the sex and second term. And Cameron? Charlie Brooker has his measure.

UPDATE: The Tories destroy the BBC? Here's Liberal Conspiracy on just how they'll do it. Resist, people. Resist.