This Australia Day, here's something to give thanks for...

If any of you have seen Michael Moore's film Sicko, you probably don't want to get sick in the United States of America. While his movies are more essays than documentaries, he paints a picture of the USA being almost the worst place in the world to require medical attention. To prove his point he travels to Cuba, and is assured he will receive low-cost quality care.

Probably quite a few people who watched Sicko voted for Barack Obama in November 2008. The reasons they voted for him are wide and varied, but many of them would have agreed that the health system in the USA was fundamentally flawed. It needed fixing.

Therefore, armed with the Presidency, a large majority in both houses of the US Congress, Obama championed reform and a bill was introduced.

Now, it is said that the two things you should never see how they are made are laws and sausages. (I would add black pudding to that list.) The process of how a bill becomes a law in the US is one of the more convoluted legislative situations in the world today.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the passage of any bill through the US Congress is the Senate filibuster.

In Australia, the party which has the majority of the members in the house can stop any other member talking by simply moving a "Point of Order" that the member who is talking no longer be heard. This is called "the guillotine", and is usually used by governments to ran through contentious legislation at speed.

This is the same in the United Kingdom, and in many parliamentary democracies all over the world that subscribe to the Westminster tradition.

However, in the United States Senate, the tradition that members should debate any issue or bill uncensored and uninhibited prevails over nearly all other rules.

Therefore, as long as a United States Senator can stay upright, and keep talking, they never cede the floor. There is no time limit on how long any Senator can speak. They can speak for as long as they are physically able to. This is known as a filibuster.

Over time, the US Senate has worked to put some roadblocks in front of the filibuster. Currently, it takes 60 Senators to invoke what Australians would know as the "guillotine", that is, to stop another Senator talking.

Yesterday, Democrats lost their 60th member of the US Senate, as Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown in the Senate seat that has been effectively held by the Kennedy family since 1953. The seat became vacant due to the death of Ted Kennedy.

This will almost certainly kill any chances of meaninful reform to the health care system in the USA. So the next time you are lamenting the sort of country you live in, or the inability of governments in Australia to get anything done, look over the Pacific Ocean, and thank your lucky stars.