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I was glad when Tiger Woods lost the PGA tournament to the South Korean, when the hurricane season cranked up in the Caribbean, when the Obama family went out West to visit national parks.

Why? Because these stories momentarily diverted our attention from the ranting, sobbing and sheer craziness that has infected the debate about health care reform.

A major flashpoint has been President Obama's "public option," a government-run plan similar to Medicare that would insure the uninsured. The "public option" would merely be one piece of overall reform because private insurance companies would still be in business.

I'm a staunch supporter of free speech, but those raucous town meetings have been downright embarrassing. Such as the woman in the Midwest who screamed at her congressman: "You're making America a socialist country."

Lady, it already is a socialist country in many ways and the Republic still stands. If socialism is defined by government-run programs, look no further than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and hospitals run by the Veterans Administration.

If you tried to repeal these programs, you'd have mass uprisings that would make those noisy town meetings look genteel.

Overseas, meanwhile, they're totally baffled by our temper tantrums. The United States is the only Western industrialized country without a national health care system. Elsewhere, health care is a fundamental right, not a privilege. But in this country, more than 48 million Americans have none. And the rest of us pay outrageous fees for the privilege.

We Americans smugly claim we have "the best health care system in the world." Not so. It's only the best for those who can afford it. Nationwide, our life expectancy is shorter than most Western nations with a universal health care system.

Britain's 61-year-old NHS provides free health care for all citizens. The British gripe about its flaws, but we also gripe our own system's costliness, its crowded, understaffed hospitals, etc.

Beating up on Brits has gone overboard. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said "countries that have government-run health care" wouldn't have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has a brain tumor, good care because he is too old. Nonsense.

An editorial in Investor's Business Daily, a U.S. publication, said Stephen Hawking, 67, the renowned British scientist who has Lou Gehrig's disease, would not have a chance in the U.K, and that the NHS would deem his life to be "essentially worthless."

An outraged Hawking replied: "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS."

I've had my own encounters with the NHS. Years ago, during a vacation in England, I developed an upset stomach and needed a doctor. My hotel gave me the name of a NHS doctor a few blocks away. He agreed to see me that day.

When I arrived at his office, known in Britain as his "surgery," I got worried. The waiting room was small and rather shabby. Like most Americans, I was used to sleek, well-appointed doctors' offices (or "Taj Mahals," as one wag dubbed some of them).

The English doctor was nice, unrushed and reassuring. He sent me on my way with medicine and instructions to call the next day if I weren't better. When I asked his nurse (his only office staff) about payment, I was not charged, even though I was a foreigner.

Years later, while living in London, I also needed a doctor -- this time for my son who had a sore throat. I called the NHS doctor in our neighborhood. We were seen that afternoon.

The doctor, a nice woman, had a small, nondescript surgery. She diagnosed my son's illness as strep throat. Medication was prescribed (she also called that night to check on him).

As I left her office, I asked the receptionist for the bill, explaining that I was a foreigner. By then, the NHS had rightly begun charging foreigners. The receptionist (her only staff) handed me the bill. It was the British equivalent of $5.

I'm not suggesting that Britain, Canada and countries with national health care have perfect systems. Far from it. But America's costly hodgepodge system is infinitely further from that cherished goal.

Rosemary Roberts writes a column on alternate Fridays. E-mail: rmroberts@triad.rr.com