let's be more like canada, eh?

We like to make fun of our Canadian neighbors. But you know, they have some good things going for them.

Like health care. Nick Kristof has a good column picking apart the kneejerk reaction to the idea of national health care that "we'll all have to wait months for an operation like in Canada."

Well, a health care system that gives us, at the price of the highest expenditure on health care per capita in the world ($6800), a lower life expectancy than Cyprus and children that die twice as often as in Portugal and women that die in childbirth three times more often than in Greece maybe isn't the grand bargain you think. Especially when you remember that when you lose your job, you lose your insurance too - a double hit.

Maybe the Canadian system isn't so bad.

And now as we pump cash into AIG and Citibank and count the dead and dying banks, we can look north and see a country full of healthy banks. In fact, Canada has the healthiest banking system in the world. Why? A combination of cautious regulation and cautious moves by the banks themselves.

So personally I'd love to be a little bit more like Canada. Although I will draw the line at hockey.