Well, the difference here in the U. S., Sandy, is that in their zeal to cater to big business, a distressing number of our senators and congressmen do things like refusing to cancel military contracts for such things as the F-22 fighter plane, designed for a Cold War situation and essentially useless for the kind of conflicts we find ourselves in now and anticipate possibly finding ourselves in the future--and which the Pentagon neither needs nor wants--in order to keep great wads of the military budget flowing into businesses in their home districts.
In the meantime, 47 million Americans are going without health insurance because they can't afford the premiums.