It was later than I thought. This morning everything seemed to be going well until I was about 10 yards away from the bus stop, and the bus went by.

I yanked out my cellphone - I use it instead of a watch - and checked the time. Sure enough. The bus was not early.

The bus runs up the street, but instead of going straight downtown it winds back into the next neighborhood. I have a good chance of catching it when it comes back around to a stop about a mile from that corner, so I started jogging. When I was about half-way there, someone called my name, and I get a ride with a neighbor.

Nice guy, give you the shirt off his back, and we haven't talked in a long time so there's a lot to cover. When talk turns to insurance, how much he's paying, how he has to be careful to stay insurable, how his deductible and copays about keep him broke, I say, "with all what we have to deal with, I wonder what they're talking about when they say national health care would eliminate choice."

"You'd be surprised," he says.

Well, I was surprised. I expected someone who isn't having any fun at all with the current health care system to be on the side calling for reform, but apparently not. There weren't any specific problems he meant. "You'd be surprised" is about all it amounts to.

There is a curious kind of cognitive disconnect when people don't trust government to run a health care system, but it's OK for government to send our sons and daughters off to war. On the one hand they raise a ruckus when the census comes around, and then they have no problem with warrantless surveillance. A health care system that bleeds them into poverty - most individual bankruptcies are due to medical bills - is OK, even if insurance company execs make billions and the care they receive is demonstrably inferior to that in any other industrialized country, but even a suggestion of raising taxes and out come the tricorns and the Tetley tea bags.

I'd go to Canada. I'm told their system doesn't work but Canadians aren't going bankrupt over their medical bills, they have a lower infant mortality rates, and longer life expectancies. If that is what it means when something doesn't work I welcome failure.

Problem is, of course, Canadians would love for us to solve our own problems. They're pretty tired of Americans crossing the border to cadge free medical care, cheap medicine, and lower car registration fees. Well, actually, I bet they don't mind the car registrations.

But meanwhile folks here wonder why we're in such a hurry to fix a broken system.

I tell them it's because it's later than they think.