Far East Cynic

You ran for Vice President-that did not quite work out the way you had hoped.

After that, you became bored running America’s largest, most homogeneous, and easiest to run state.

It’s still a month or so till moose hunting season.

The kids are all back in school-except Bristol, who’s got child care worries of her own.

So how does one fill the time?

You go to see Spike of course!

I’m not sure Spike is thrilled to hear that Sarah Palin is coming to visit-with every thing else he has to think about.

Now why,  exactly, would Sarah Palin make her first trip to Asia to Hong Kong?

So she can tell people she’s seen the "real China".  That’s rich. Of course she can tell every one "she saw Taiwan from her hotel room "in Central.

Then again, if you really want to be President, maybe its a good idea to meet the people who are going to finance your tax cuts. That of course assumes rich Chinese businessmen are still wanting buy American Treasuries in 2013………….

Maybe she could get a few minutes with Sir Bow Tie-to compare notes on in office buffoonery.

Maybe, when her speechifying is done-she can drop by Hari’s and have a drink with women who are in the same profession as Sarah Palin is now. Professional courtesy and all that. Only Palin gets better paid.

If she really wanted to accomplish something-she would drop by the HSBC building on a Sunday afternoon and get an up close and personal look at the type of capitalism she is defending.  The type of people who are employed at a ridiculously low salary by the people she will be addressing. Do you think she even has any idea of the struggles these women go through? I sincerely doubt it. She probably thinks its all their own fault anyway………….

But I’m sure she will get some shopping done-considering her yearly income just went up 400%!

You know the world is really screwed up-when Sarah Palin gets to go to HK-and here I sit in Shopping Mall USA. She should come here-and I should go there, we’ll both enjoy it more.

Still, I’d love to see Spike and Sarah Palin in the same room together. My money’s on Spike.

 UPDATE: I guess minus a campaign staff, old Todd is missing more than a couple of things as Saint Sarah pares down the list of money making opportunities. Like the fact that she is speaking to a firm that is:

1) Owned by a lot of Frenchmen: CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets is Asia’s leading, independent brokerage and investment group. The company provides equity broking, capital markets, merger and acquisition, and asset management services to global corporate and institutional clients. CLSA’s major shareholder is France’s Credit Agricole, which merged in 2003 with Credit Lyonnais. CLSA enjoys substantial staff ownership, which contributes to its independent stance and operations. As an independent sub group of Credit Agricole, CLSA provides brokerage and execution services for Asian equities to the bank’s global clients.

2) Supports climate change and cap and trade: CLSA is committed to raising awareness of climate change among the public, investors and regulators and has initiated measures to reduce its own carbon footprint. CLSA issues reports on the environment and CLSA Capital Partners invests into companies that support resource efficiency and environmental technology. CLSA offices throughout Asia are ISO 14001 certified and CLSA has a published environmental policy.
 

3. Is heavily invested in things she purports not to like: CLSA is a sponsor of the Clinton Global Initiative (‘CGI’) meetings, which bring together global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
 

So whose palling around with Socialists now?

The S.O. and I went to the movies this evening. We went to see the English version of the Hayao Miyazaki film, Gake no ue no Ponyo. (Ponyo of above the cliff (by the sea)). The Disney title is simpler: Ponyo.

If you only see one "G" rated movie this year-this is the one.

Now I am slightly biased as the S.O. introduced me to Miyazaki in Japan when we first met-and I have been captivated by his animation ever since. Even though its just a cartoon-all of Miayzaki’s cartoons are best seen on the big screen. They are that good. I’m on a quest now to get the Japanese version-the last four of his movies I’ve seen in both languages.

In this movie, I was happy to see Miyazaki return to a movie subject that is less intense than the ones he covered in Howl’s Moving Castle ( Horu no ugoku shiro) and Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi). I truly thought those movies were not really children’s movies-in fact, I thought they would be quite scary for young children. This movie goes back to a kind of innocence that is present in his earlier films. Like my personal favorite-Kiki’s Delivery Service ( Majo no Takubin).

Like all of his films-there is magic and very vivid imagery of that magic. See for yourself:

Its a good movie-even if you don’t have kids to take to it.

By Howard Beale.

Whenver I see Glen Beck on the TV-either at work or normally in the gym, where I crank up the speed on the treadmill because my anger towards the good Mr. Beck gets pumped up-I always think of the movie Network.

Because in the personage of Glenn Beck, Bill O’ Reilly, and Michelle Malkin-the absurd satire of Paddy Chayfesky’s story has become reality. 

One of the things that’s great about Network is that we see how thin the divide between news and sensationalism really are. And we also get a chance to peek inside what people of the 1970s feared most about TV’s future – a future that actually came to pass in the reality TV and talk show infested tube of today.

Kirsten Dunst shooting a music video in Tokyo:

The video was shot in Akihabara-the Tokyo electronics district. More pix here.

For only the second time in half a century-Japan has a Prime Minister who is not from LDP:

TOKYO, Aug 30 (Reuters) – Japanese voters swept the opposition to a historic victory in an election on Sunday, ousting the long-ruling conservative party and handing the novice Democrats the job of reviving a struggling economy.

The win by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ends a half-century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and breaks a deadlock in parliament, ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut wasteful budget outlays and reduce the power of bureaucrats.

But the untested party will have to move quickly to keep support among voters worried about a record jobless rate and a rapidly ageing society that is inflating social security costs.

"The people are angry with politics now and the ruling coalition. We felt a great sense of people wanting change for their livelihoods and we fought this election for a change in government," said Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama.

Media projections showed the Democrats set for a landslide win, possibly taking two-thirds of the seats in parliament’s powerful 480-member lower house. That matched earlier forecasts of a drubbing for Prime Minister Taro Aso’s LDP.

The ruling party loss ended a three-way partnership between the LDP, big business and bureaucrats that turned Japan into an economic juggernaut after the country’s defeat in World War Two. That strategy foundered when Japan’s "bubble" economy burst in the late 1980s and growth has stagnated since.

"This is about the end of the post-war political system in Japan," said Gerry Curtis, a Japanese expert at Columbia University. "It marks the end of one long era, and the beginning of another one about which there is a lot of uncertainty."

The S.O. has been following this news all month-remember a couple of years ago when she was almost giddy with excitement about the possibility of voting against LDP in the upper house elections? I think she would have been first in line to vote this time.

I asked her why she did not vote absentee this time-she said it was a lot harder than I thought it was-especially since as a US Green Card holder, she does not have a political "home" in Japan.

DIPLOMATIC SHIFT

The Democrats want to forge a diplomatic stance more independent of the United States, raising concerns about possible friction in the alliance.

"The LDP is probably going to be missed more in Washington than in Japan," said Michael Auslin at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The party has vowed to build better ties with the rest of Asia, often strained by bitter wartime memories.

"The Democrats have a positive attitude towards relations with China," said Liu Jiangyong, a Japan expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "But there are still problems in bilateral relations, which need hard work from both sides to resolve."

Economic experts worry spending plans by the Democrats, a mix of former LDP members, ex-Socialists and younger conservatives founded in 1998, will inflate Japan’s massive public debt and push up government bond yields. 

The party has vowed not to raise the 5 percent sales tax for four years while it focuses on cutting wasteful spending and tackling problems such as a shrinking and greying population.

LDP went down fighting-they had some pretty interesting cartoon commercials out this week attacking DPJ. These commercials are far more sophisticated than the filth we run on TV:

The guy with the curly hair at the start of the commercial is Hatoyama-head of DPJ ( Its popular to make fun of his hair). The four incoherent individuals (bara bara) are asked about the refueling support of the US. Their answer Hantai ( opposed). A man asks him how do we do our part. The group of four says they cannot say. Next they say they are for free trade with the US. Jiyu! Jiyu! (Free Free). And the man from the left-who portrays a farmer asks, "What are you saying?" To which the group of four responds, they cannot say. The last item has to do with decentralization of government authority. Once again they cannot say how they will do it. The commercial ends with a written line to trust Japan to LDP.

I’ll bet its a fun time to watch this unfold in Japan.

Not here in the US, but over on the right side of the International Dateline.  In Japan they will be having elections for the lower house today. Its not looking good for the home team of LDP. The odds are pretty good that they will go down to a crushing defeat. Stippy has a good detailed election round up:

The LDP won the last lower house election (2005) after Koizumi dissolved parliament to win support for his key policy of privatizing the post office.  Voter turnout was huge (for Japan) and the LDP won 296 out of the 480 seats in the lower house.  (327 including Komeito)  The Democrats didn’t even win a quarter of the seats (113/480).

This time around the tide has changed and the Democrats will be focusing on two magic numbers.  The first is 241 seats, enough for a simple majority of the lower house.  The second is 373 seats.  373 seats would mean that combined with their 109 current seats in the upper house, the Democrats would have 2/3 of all votes in a combined sitting of parliament.  In otherwords, they no longer need to worry about cooperating with any of the quacky minority parties who hold the casting vote in the upper house at the moment.  If the upper house knocks back any of their legislation they can just have a combined sitting of the two houses and force any legislation that they like through.  (The LDP+Komeito coalition have 103/242 seats in the Upper house.  The Commies have 7/242, The Socialists have 5/242 and The People’s New Party have 4/242.)

The current incumbent Prime Minister has not done much to help the LDP cause-he is extremely unpopular. Not suprising when you run a commerical like this:

The commercial starts your life, your country-is with Aso. Truly protect Japan. Ji Minto (LDP).

A lot of LDP politicans who are trying to hold on to their diet seats have deliberately avoided placing Aso on their campaign posters. Why would they want their national TV ad campaign to put the focus on an uncharismatic and unpopular leader? It’s almost as if they are trying to increase the scale of the defeat. 

And when it comes-it will bring some changes to the Japan / US security relationship. There won’t be anything drastic-but it will create headaches for US Forces in Japan. For one thing, the odds are pretty good that DPJ will reduce the amount of money Japan contributes to maintaining US forces in Japan and for construction of new facilities. The US has long relied on this money to avoid making hard decisions of its own about facilities-JFIP money is the crack cocaine of the Japan based military construction program.  The US will also have to retrench on the number of Japanese Master Labor Contract workers it gets-another freebie that masks the true costs of maintaining 40,000 plus troop in Japan.

Which could not come at worse time-as the US will be knee deep in some of the boneheaded moves it agreed to back in 2005: moving CVW-5 from Atsugi to Iwakuni, moving USMC fixed wing aircraft from Okinawa up to Honshu, and the relocation of 8000 Marines to Guam.  Japan was stuck with a bill for that last item that is over 6 Billion yen. Suffice it to say they are not happy about it. However that’s an agreement between the US and the Japanese government and I think they will be forced to abide by it.

Which is why I think they will cut the yearly cost sharing money and construction money.

A second issue will continuation of the JMSDF refueling mission in the Persian Gulf. DPJ has been on both sides of the issue, being initially against it then coming out in support.  A lot of that opposition had to do with presence of Japanese forces in Iraq-so with them now being out of Iraq, it will be interesting what will transpire. It will be interesting to see what they do about this.

A third issue will be the construction of a replacement facility for Futenma MCAS in Okinawa. Right now they are supposed to build one on the north part of the island. DPJ  will not allow a Futenma replacement  facility on Okinawa. (Somewhere else in Japan? Possible… But not Okinawa…) That means the US will leave Futenma, move the Marine helicopters to Kadena, but refuse to pay for the huge environmental
clean up costs involving closing Futenma. That ought to be fun to watch.

Finally, there will be opposition to basing new types of assets on the Kanto plain. The nuclear carrier issue has been solved thankfully, but as Japan develops its capabilities for areas like ballistic missile defense-there will be more push back on anything that appears to be an expansion of US footprint. Again, another interesting thing to watch.

You can probably expect big publicity whenever something bad happens with a Sailor or Marine-but don’t expect any changes to the Status of Forces agreement. It would just get too hard for both sides.

Of how far gone Americans are, is delivered by Munro Ferguson at Coming Anarchy:

This post could be subtitled: Why I find American politics tedious.

I steer clear of online political forums, read very few blatantly partisan blogs (though the few that do rest in my rss reader are excellent) and typically flip past cable news programs of a political bent. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate domestic politics or find political discussion boring in and of itself. It’s the noise.

The keening, shrill, oft juvenile shrieking that pours forth from the lunatic fringe of both political proclivities, left and right. This fringe may well entail a minority in the American body politic but what they lack in numbers they make up for in pure, shouting volume.

Common sense, critical debate and any semblance of reality are drowned out in a crescendo of hysterical and vapid nonsense that starts with [choose your partisan radio/television savant] and is passed along to a herd of willing recipients who re-manufacture the whole mess on a smaller scale (the political forums I mentioned, public speaking events, protests, etc.) One of the more insidious aspects of this irritating and loud minority is the ease in which they draw hackneyed comparisons between their enemy du jour and history’s darkest ideologies, institutions and tyrants. The more proliferate example of this idiocy these days can be found regarding both the previous and current administrations and the evocation of history’s most tragically successful sociopath, Adolf Hitler. During the Bush administration it was all the rage among left wing anti-warriors with a whole lot of energy and very little sense.

Most recently the ignorant comparison has been attributed to right wing simpletons who’ve taken the leftward swing of American domestic policy under President Barack Obama and followed their left wing cousins of yore: ObamaHitler The logic used to support this position is childlike in it’s simplicity. Hitler’s Nazi party was officially called the National Socialist German Workers Party. You see, it’s got “socialist” in it and so if Obama’s left wing policies are tantamount to a national shift toward socialism (which they are cuz Sean Hannity sez so) and the Nazis described their party as socialist, well say no more. The conclusion is easy. Forget all that historical context of the rise and fall of fascism; hyper-nationalism, anti-semitism, anti-communism, expansionism, etc. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a Nazi.

I understand that mud slinging and politics go hand in hand but, really, it’s gotten to the point of absurdity.

One of the more interesting things about the health care debate in this country-is the argument being made that the free market does not, of itself, impose any sort of rationing on health care services.

Ezra Klein recently did a pretty good job blowing a hole in that theory:

"Look at Canada," says Charles Krauthammer. "Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we."

So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.

I’ve used these numbers before, but let’s repeat them. A 2001 survey by the policy journal Health Affairs found that 38 percent of Britons and 27 percent of Canadians reported waiting four months or more for elective surgery. Among Americans, that number was only 5 percent. This, Americans will tell you, is the true measure of our system’s performance. We have our problems. But at least we don’t sit in some European purgatory languishing without our treatments. That’s rationing.

But as Klein expertly notes-there is flip side to valuing only the size of a persons credit line:

There is, however, a flip side to that. The very same survey also looked at cost problems among residents of different countries: 24 percent of Americans reported that they did not get medical care because of cost. Twenty-six percent said they didn’t fill a prescription. And 22 percent said they didn’t get a test or treatment. In Britain and Canada, only about 6 percent of respondents reported that costs had limited their access to care.

The numbers are almost mirror images of each other. Twenty-seven percent of Canadians wait more than four months for treatment, versus only four percent of Americans. Twenty-four percent of Americans can’t afford medical care at all, versus only 6 percent of Canadians. And the American numbers are understated because if you can’t afford your first appointment, you never learn you couldn’t afford the medicine or test that the doctor would have prescribed.

We ration. And if the numbers and the surveys don’t convince you of the point, this is what it looks like when we ration.

The problem with the health care as just another product analogy-is that it does not work very well. For example, I can put off or never buy a TV and it won’t kill me-I have alternatives for entertainment: Books, magazines, walks, etc. However I do not have an alternative to health care-especially if you are on the bad side of 50 as I am. Preventive health care, early detection, paying attention to my body’s signals are no longer things I can blow off. To do so is to invite destruction. For that matter it never was an option to simply not have preventive care. I consider myself fortunate to have been in a career field that demanded a comprehensive physical exam each and every year. Annoying as the finger wave and turning and coughing was, the idea of not having prostate or testicular cancer made the indignity worthwhile.

Rationing by price is still rationing just like rationing by need is (even though no program currently being considered has rationing by need.) Just because a service is available doesn’t mean I can access it. That is rationing, allocating a limited supply of healthcare to those who can pay the most for it. The question is, "Is rationing by price the most effective way to get healthcare to those who need it?" My answer is no.

But since the government is not involved in that rationing-as John Cole points out, that somehow makes it better? Again,  the answer is a big fat no.

 Just take it to a recycling center………….

Coming to a store near you-your very own Stepford Wife!

 The Asian Miss Universe contestants can be found here!

Miss Indonesia 2009.

Or why I write about the things I do.

As I was working out this afternoon, rocking out on the I-pod and trying to figure out some way to get Glenn Beck off of the TV in front of the treadmill I was on ( Thank God for the mirrors-so you can see the spandex clad lovelies behind you).-I was thinking to myself, "Why do I put myself through this? Surely there is some niche, military things that you can write about-or for that matter just re-tell some old sea stories. Anything but writing about the current political situation-and eliciting the words" NAZI " and SOCIALIST" over and over again.

I supposed I could. However, truth be told-while I can tell a sea story with the best of them-reliving my past military days is not one of my primary interests anymore. I’m very proud of my service and grateful that I got to have the career I did for as long as I did. However truth be told, that’s a part of my life that is in the past. I just can’t get too excited about it anymore.

Very well, what about the current state of the military?

I could do that I suppose, but its being done better over at other blogs. By people who have more of a passion for it than I. Does not mean I don’t have an opinion on lots of issues-and I am distressed by some of the current developments in my beloved Navy. But they just don’t blow my skirt up like they once did. I want to do some different things with the years left in front of me. I’ll still be interested-but there are other things I want to explore too.

Primarily, I write about politics because I still feel passionate about the subject. And I am immensely troubled by what has transpired over the years since the United States had its last really good President, George H.W. Bush. Particularly troubling to me is the demonization of opposite viewpoints. Its no longer that one can simply agree to disagree and then have a beer together,  a whole industry is being built up on both sides in fostering loathing to go with that disagreement. Anyone with half a brain should be troubled by that development. Barak Obama and George W. Bush did not start that-the roots are much, much deeper and go back to the late 1970′s if not earlier.

Regardless of where it came from-politics continues to fascinate me. So I write about it.

Sex still fascinates me. I like to both do it and write about it.

Beautiful women are pretty cool. I never tire of looking at them. Front, back, top, bottom, legs, breasts and everything in between. So I like to write about that.

I love travel. I need to travel-the way other people need a fix of their favorite drink. So I write about that.

Exploitation of overseas workers is of interest to me. If I were a man of causes, mine would be the exploitation of Filipinas, Indonesians, Bangladeshis, etc-to make the rich richer. Without being paid a decent wage themselves. I find it more than a little appalling. And interesting that the sex industry revolves around it. So from time to time I write about that.

My readership would probably be a lot higher if I dropped the politics entirely. The true believers think I am a liberal snake in the grass, the left turns its back on me because I despise feminism and think women belong out side the gate, not inside the wire.

However these are the subjects that hold my interest. So I’ll keep on chugging away at the keyboard.

One of the harder lessons I learned in life was learning how to "hold fire". When I was much younger, I believed that the truth of ideas and a well thought out argument were sufficient unto itself. The problem is, the working world really does not work that way-especially in a large organization where people do not know each other well. Over the years-through hard won experience-I have developed warning signals. These are little alarm bells that go off in my head telling me, "be careful what you say to this person-until you get to know them a lot better".  At work the objective is to get things done-not to get wrapped up in a conversation that is going to lead you down a rat hole you will later regret. In general you  need the cooperation of other people-if they find out you are just another liberal snake in the grass, it many times makes it hard to do that. Besides in waiting-you can usually hold on to a more devastating reply till its really needed. The list is not all inclusive and your mileage may vary. They in general have worked for me.

Thing to wary of #1-Women with hyphenated last names.

I mean really. If a woman likes her maiden name so much, why not keep it? Lots of women do-even if for only to avoid the bother of changing credit cards etc. Or take your husband’s name if you think that is the right thing to do. But trying to split the baby down the middle by not choosing is just absurd.  Accordingly, it is generally a good bet that when you run into a woman with a hyphenated name, there is a thumb worn copy of a Gloria Steinem book in or around her night stand. Feminism is lurking close by-so play it smart and keep your mouth more or less shut.

Thing to be wary of #2- People who home school their kids.

When you hear a person talking about that, again , its a good idea to tread carefully in any conversation that does not exclusively pertain to working matters. This is not to debate the merits pro or con of home schooling, but anyone who is of a mind to put in that much work ( because if its done right-it is a lot of work for one or both parents)-it usually means they may be passionate about other things. Conservatively passionate and / or devoutly religious. Tread carefully.

Thing to be wary of #3- Conversations that start out, " I was just reading on Drudge." DANGER WILL ROBINSON! There are a lot of good news aggregators out there-Drudge is not one of them. Chances of the names Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Hannity coming up in conversation have just gone up drastically. Change the subject to pro-football fast.

Thing to be wary of #4- People who have PHD’s but are not MD’s insisting on being called "Doctor"-and you are not working at a University-that’s probably another sign to be careful.  Worked with a guy once who insisted on introducing himself as Dr.XXXX.  Yea, yea you have a PHD. So  how come you got laid off last year?

Thing to be wary of #5- People who treat secretaries and administrative assistants like sh*t.  Or demand that they do every last little thing when it comes to travel. In general that’s a sign of someone who is status conscious and that generally transfers over into other relationships-e.g. they won’t do anything about what you need until someone senior to them asks. That’s not always true-but if the first thing you see or hear about a person is how they interact with the lady or the man answering their phone-I’m not prone to take it as a good sign.

Thing to be wary of #6- People who love to repeat their resume, well after you have first met them or gotten to know them for a bit. I’m not talking about someone who tells a good sea story-I’m talking about someone who talks about what their position in another organization was over and over again. If they are senior to you, its best to be polite and move on quickly to another topic.

Thing to be wary of #7- A local problem for some people. Alabama football fans. When you see big Roll Tide stickers all over their cube, be careful. You don’t want to blurt out "Go Vols" at just the wrong moment.

Thing to be wary of #8-Would not have thought of this till last year. People who say they love Sarah Palin. Chances are that attitude reflects over into other parts of their life. Especially now that she is shilling for Glen Beck. There is no arguing with a Sarah Palin fan-victimhood is their common trait. Go over their head and get them in trouble with their boss-its far more effective-and fun.

I have nothing of substance to contribute to the assessment of his career right now but just wanted to add my condolences. I’ve spent as much time as anyone bad mouthing him in my earlier years-and I did not agree with all of his positions. I will agree with those who say he was better than a lot of our current crop of Senators at getting things done legislatively.

My biggest question will be how long the discussion about this event can stay civil. My bet is not very long.

H/T to John Cole for finding this.  I can testify to the Japanese system-I’ve been treated by it myself and I went with the S.O. to her doctor’s appointments. Of course the piece he doesn’t tell is the challenge of being a Gaijin who doesn’t speak Japanese-and not being in a major city like Tokyo. That can be a frightening experience. However, folks I knew who had babies at Japanese hospitals were pretty fine with every thing about-except the food.

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

By T.R. Reid
Sunday, August 23, 2009

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we’ve overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they’ve found ways to cover everybody — and still spend far less than we do.

I’ve traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others — for instance, Canada and Taiwan — rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries — including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland — provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet’s purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation’s 200 private health insurance plans — a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn’t like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don’t get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment — and insurance has to pay.

Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations — Germany, Britain, Austria — outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don’t bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don’t you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon’s office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise — private-sector, for-profit health insurance — is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France’s health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada’s universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who’s had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" — precisely the people most likely to need the insurers’ service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer’s "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.

Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can’t cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group’s chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people’s medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we’re Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we’re Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we’re Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we’re Burundi or Burma: In the world’s poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can’t pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we’ve blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don’t. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets — the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research — the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," to be published Monday.

 JRandom pointed out that Atomu ( in its Americanization known as Astro boy) is missing from my Saturday Morning Cartoons collection. Surely an oversight-or a bias against anime characters. One or the other other.

But come this October, I sense I am going to be glued to my 3-D seat watching this: