You can watch it streaming from their website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Here is the shorthand of how they do it
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/

Americans are going to die - tax-paying, patriotic Americans - because Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Nancy Pelosi won't stand up and defend them from the scheming grifters in the insurance, medical, and pharmaceutical industry.

Ralph Nader was completely and totally wrong to stay in the race in 2000. But that doesn't mean that his observation that there is barely a bit of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans was wrong.

What we are seeing on the health care debate is that, when crunch time comes and American lives are on the line, the politicians of both parties are going to do what is right for themselves.

It happened prior to 9/11 when the Bush administration was too busy on vacation to bother watching out for Bin Laden.

It is happening right now when the Democrats in Congress are more concerned with going on vacation than they are with protecting the health of the American people.

Sad part is that more Americans will die this year from lack of health care due to Democratic corruption than those who died in 9/11and the Iraq war combined.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_re_us/us_california_budget

I wouldn't call it a lack of courage or competence. I think it's far more willful in nature. They are, in fact, representing their constituencies (the corps). Anything counter to that primary motivation is straight PR. What would you expect with 90% of them being lawyers.

Not sure I'd go as far as the libertarian approach, but one thing is certain, if the dems don't get anything of substance done, there will be a tremendous amount of alienation come 2012. That wave of youthful voters excited about politics just last year, seeing that this party is also failing to lead, may tune out again.

And, yeah, Shep, we can always come to terms with the lesser of 2 evils vote (I've been doing it for 20 years). But when corporatist dems seem equally disinclined to represent Americans' interests, when we're waiting on change we can believe in for decades...

Without term limits or publicly financed campaigns, the only power we have over them is the vote. How to punish them, how to pressure them to actually do the people's bidding. If the dems fail, at this moment, with the scope of the current crises, I honestly see a viable third party forming. Ideally, they'd target congressional races as well (coalition gov'ts being closer to democracy IMO).

Bottom line: I think all can agree that our system is failing. People may debate who's to blame or the best solutions, but the fact remains that on every front our gov't seems incapable of solving the problems we face.

Bingo. This should be said everytime someone goes Chicken Little and starts running around shouting, "It's gonna cost money! It's gonna cost money!"

Yeah, it costs money. It costs money now.

You mean the folks who engage in politics by not joining either of the only two political parties and can't discern any serious difference between Democrats and Republicans and helped elect George Bush (sort of) twice. Those libertarians?

We need to crush Ronald Regan corporatist conservatism. Period.

Or when Bush wanted to do Medicare Part D, with no funding mechanism in place, the Blue Dog Democrats were happy to say yes.

Or when Bush, later Obama, wanted trillions to bail out Wall Street the Democrats voted yes.

But when it comes time to vote to provide people with heatlh care, or to clean up the environment, or to improve our schools, Congress cries poverty.

Congress - which is firmly in control by the Democrats - lacks the competence and the courage to do its job. They are simply not up to the job of running the government.

Maybe the libertarians are right. Let's just dissolve the union, let states form regional coalitions, and go from there. From my perspective, maybe a confederation of states that included like-minded populations like Washington, Oregon, and Vermont, or the Southern states in the old Confederacy, would be far more responsive to the desires of their populations.

I'm fed up with having my health, welfare, and tax dollars decided for me by people like Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and James Inhofe. I didn't vote for them. They don't represent me. (They barely represent the people who did vote for them.) Doesn't make any sense that my tax dollars, or the health choices of my daughters, should be decided for me by people that I can't directly vote for.