THANKSGIVING - Be grateful for what you are taking for granted.

A few days from now we will celebrate one of our favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. Contrary to popular belief this holiday, initiated in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621 and not picked up again until President Lincoln made it a national holiday in 1863, is not just celebrated in the U.S. Many countries, including Italy, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, India and China celebrate harvest. Canada remembers the arrival in 1578 of British explorer Arthur Frobisher who threw a meal for his crew when they, barely, made it to Canadian shores. The Netherlands celebrates in honor of the pilgrims leaving Leyden for the new world. Liberia celebrates American style, but without the turkey.

Many countries generalize popular gratitude. Our Thanksgiving dinners often feature a simple question: "What are you thankful for?" Even though we should expect this conversation, we are often still caught off base. Aside from family focused experiences and feelings we are grateful for, we might consider expressing gratitude for some of the so-called simple things we have in our lives.

If you have a roof over your head - Be thankful!

   In the U.S. more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. This includes 2.5 million children, and 16% of homeless adults are veterans.

If you are having a great meal with family and friends, and if, by chance, you are serving one or more of the 52,000,000 turkeys consumed in our country each Thanksgiving day - Be grateful!

   805 Million people in the world are chronically under-nourished. 18,000 Children die every day from hunger and malnutrition.

If you have clean water and if you are able to enjoy hot showers - Be thankful!

   63 Million people (1 in 10) lack access to safe water. 2,000 Kids under the age of five  die each day from diseases related to contaminated water. That is 1 every 21 seconds! 1.8 Billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometer, but not in their house or yard, consume on average 20 liters per day. In the U.S. we use 600 liters a day, which is the highest in the world.

I am certain we can come up with many other experiences we take for granted, and which we could give some intellectual and emotional perspective. The point is that most of us are better off than a substantial number of people in the owrld. While recognizing that even in the U.S. 48 million citizens live below the poverty line - 16 million of which are childeren and 5 million seniors - almost all of us are taking things for granted many others can only dream of. We should be grateful for living where we are and for everything we take for granted. Due to the accident of birth or the ability to choose you are living in one of the most comfortable places in the world, whatever its faults and however much we bicker over how to distribute our resources. We are lucky. After all, the odds of being born American, according to a 2005 W.H.O. report, are only 5%. In fact, given what is involved in the reproductive process, the odds of you coming into the world at all are only about 1 in 400 trillion (Harvard study.)

Finally, certainly not last, we should be thankful for the bravery displayed by the men and women we sent into harm's way. They face danger every day. Many of them will spend the holidays away from their family in the various war zones we are still, and again, involved in. Some of them will pay the ultimate price defending all the things we are thankful for.

With that in mind I think we should all read and re-read the prayer Eleanor Roosevelt carried with her throughout Worl War II:

Dear Lord,

Lest I continue

My complacent way,

Help me to remember that somewhere,

Somehow out there

A man died for me today.

As long as there be war,

I then must

Ask and answer

Am I worth dying for?

Go look at yourself in a mirror and answer the question.

Happy Thanksgiving!

GOP CANDIDATES REBUKE DEMOCRATS FOR PARIS ATTACKS

It did not take long for GOP candidates to blame the Democrats for the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Several of these were illustrative of an ignorant mindset not worthy of intellectual discourse.

Carly Fiorina has an uncanny ability to manifest selective memory. Not only does she re-imagine her professional past at H.P., she also forgets that had George Bush et al not engaged Iraq and Sadam when they did, none of this might have happened. Sadam Hussein was an intolerant and cruel dictator. However, he would not have tolerated Isis. Removing him upended the balance of power in the region. We deliberately banned his mostly Sunny military professionals from continuing to operate. Most of them ended up fighting with Al Qaida and Isis when the Shiite forces filled the void. Fiorina's rant that she is "angry that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared victory in Iraq abandoning our hard-won gains...." which somehow made them responsible for "the murder, the mayhem, the danger,the tragedy that we see unfolding in Paris," is ignorant. George Bush prepped our exit from Iraq while still President. Her lack of understanding of historical context, and her inability to analyze facts, make her entirely unprepared to even run for the presidency. Ignorance is a curse. She should leave that garbage where it belongs, in her head.

Donald Trump's suggestion that the Paris attacks would have been a much different situation had the vistims been armed with guns, is outright stupid.

If this is the best the GOP can come up with we can only hope that our citizens wake up. We can not afford this level of degenerate thinking to rise to a leadership level in the country.

SHOULD WE CONSIDER ADOPTING A SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE SYSTEM?

This is the time of the year when many of us need to consider our health insurance options. Given the steep increases in premiums, this may also be when we re-confront the discussion about what kind of health insurance system our country should ultimately adopt. Since we are in the midst of a poliktical election cycle as well, the pundits argue publicly for and against the Affordable Care  Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), the desirability of adopting a single-payer healthcare system as prevalent in virtually all developed countries, or to stick with the market based private insurance system we supposedly have even under Obamacare.

Single-payer national health insurance, also known as "Medicare for all," is a system in which a single public or quasi public agency organizes healthcare financing, while the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Under a single-payer system all residents of the U.S. would be covered for all medical necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive healthcare, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. In the 1950s U.S. health statistics were world class: Infant mortality among the lowest, life expectancy among the highest, and health care costs about average. One by one other nations - like Denmark, Sweden, Australia, the U.K., Canada and Taiwan - adopted national health programs. By the end of the 20th century the U.S. was the lone holdout for private, for profit health insurance. Its health statistics lagged behind dozens of countries, while costs soared to twice the average in other wealthy nations.

The U.S. spends 16% of GDP on health. This compares to 8.5% in the U.K. and Australia, and significantly less than 16% in most developed countries. Of eleven nations studied by the World Health Organization and the OECD the U.S. ranked lowest on accessibility, efficiency, and healthy lives outcomes (mortality related to medical care, infant mortality, and healthy life expectancy at age 60.) A similar study done by the Commonwealth Fund in 2014 confirmed these conclusions.

Many countries have realized huge savings by evicting private insurers and eliminating the reams of expensive paperwork they require from doctors and hospitals. Aetna keeps 19 cents of every premium dollar for overhead and profit. U.S. hospitals devote 25.3% of total revenue to administration, which reflects the high cost of collecting patient co-payments and deductibles, and fighting with insurers. Obamacare will  direct an additional $850 billion in public funds to private insurers, and boost insurance overhead by $273.6 billion. Yet, it will leave 26 million citizens uninsured, and similar numbers with such skimpy coverage that a major illness will bankrupt them. By contrast, insurance overhead in single-payer systems takes only 1-2 percent. Proponents estimate (and argue) that moving to a single-payer system would save about $400 billion a year on paperwork and administration.

The controversy surrounding the single-payer system does not seem to focus on the desirability of achieving universal coverage, it is largely concerned with the means of getting there. Thus far the arguments have not changed much over time. Proponents suggest that the system provides universal coverage; diminishes the administrative load on healthcare professionals; significantly lowers cost; eliminates the need for insurance companies; and requires only one buyer which would improve efficiency while providing substantial negotiating power.

Those opposed retort that the system would be government controlled, effectively converting everyone in the system to government employees; would diminish the incentive to pursue research and development; force higher taxes with fewer benefits; contribute to drug abuse; and promote a rising demand for welfare.

This conversation ties into the ongoing dispute over raising the Medicare eligibillity age to help pay for the benefits most of us paid for during our working life. The trust funds paying into Social Security and Medicare are estimated to dry up by the early 1930s. One argument being floated is that raising the eligibility age will over time allow us to free up resources that could be used to achieve universal coverage along the lines of Switzerland's market based system (Avik Roy, Forbes, December 12, 2012). While these discussions continue, we might keep an eye on the outcome of a single-payer "ColoradoCare" proposal Colorado is placing on their 2016 ballot, which is designed to replace Obamacare with a new single-payer system (at a cost of $25 billion per year.)

Fareek Zakaria, a political centrist, journalist and author with a regular program on CNN, answers our opening question as follows: "There is absolutely no question that when we look at the ability to provide good healthcare at an affordable price, lower levels of massive inequality in healthcare outcomes or provisions,  a single government payer and multiple private providers is the answer."

While we may be tempted to add our two cents to the discussion, real change will require political courage, which Washington appears to be lacking. It is easier to express contempt for Obamacare than it is to come up with an alternative. In the mean time we just need to suck it up and pay the premiums, unless we are lucky and old enough to go on Medicare.