It's been awhile since I've posted anything, but with today's news that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will not run for re-election and is resigning from office, I felt I needed to say something.

Obviously, last year, I spent several months working hard to elect Palin to the vice presidency, and was happy to do so. It wasn't always easy (the phenomenal amount of media attention, irrespective of it being positive or negative, ensured that). Likewise, I imagine the decision she announced today was not. I know that she said that with her children having given it a unanimous thumbs-up, it was, but I also know that so many women who maintain a high public, business, political or other profile often find themselves asking whether they're making a mistake/abdicating responsibility/letting others down/letting themselves down when they decide to make a change like this one. I wouldn't be surprised if Palin was one of them. I know I've been there myself....

Please remind me again who was the "change" candidate last year?[intro]

I've been a longstanding critic of Britain's NHS, having been a patient within the system for the roughly 10 years that I lived in the UK and having been in a position to read, watch and hear the barrage of stories pointing out real flaws in the NHS system both firsthand and via news reports during the time I lived there.

So, it disturbs me a little that some out there seem to think the NHS presents a model worthy of consideration for emulation as part of the debate over health care reform in the US. Yes, I understand that President Obama is not proposing that we institute an NHS as a solution to our health care problems (the NHS, remember, isn't just single-payer, something that, as David Sirota points out, Obama once supported and which he conjectures he still supports, it's actually government control of most health care provision). However, as my good friend Phil Klein writes at the Spectator blog, health care legislation emanating from the (Democratic-controlled) Senate, under the leadership of Ted Kennedy, does say that health care exchanges (to be run by states, but apparently funded at least partially with federal monies) "shall include a public health insurance option." This note, per Phil, appears on page 43 of the legislation, if you want to check it out. The point here is, though, that this sounds to at least some people, including Phil, like a way of "migrating more people to government health care over time." And that is something that makes consideration of what exactly goes on in places where there is government-run health care worth at least a little consideration, as this debate moves forward....