Our health care system is not the envy of the world, not by a long shot. It is so feared--the world over, that even the conservative British prime minister, David Cameron, is going to great lengths to assure the British people that 'American-style' healthcare is not going to happen in Britain. His political future depends on him conveying this message over and over.

So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice. "We will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be moving towards an insurance scheme, we will not introduce an American-style private system," Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically told a group of healthcare workers in a nationally televised address last week. In case they didn't hear it the first time, Cameron repeated the dreaded "A"-word in a list of five guarantees he offered the British people at the end of his speech. "If you're worried that we're going to sell off the NHS or create some American-style private system, we will not do that," he said. "In this country we have the most wonderful, precious institution and also precious idea that whenever you're ill … you can walk into a hospital or a surgery and get treated for free, no questions asked, no cash asked. It is the idea at the heart of the NHS, and it will stay. I will never put that at risk."

This is a harsh and withering indictment of our depraved system. This is how the world sees us and as we know, it's horrifyingly accurate.

They have good reason to be frightened, so are we, we lose 44,000 Americans every year because they do not have access to health insurance and health care.

If you want to learn from an extraordinary panel of experts about the unique and horrifying probems of the U.S. health care system, please join us at Netroots Nation at the health policy panel, Saturday at 1:30 PM