On January 8, 2001, I moderated the first of four hour-long radio programs on KPBS called Health Care Roundtable. These programs were broadcast statewide and brought together distinguished medical professionals, advocates, policy makers, and elected officials. We talked about the struggles of Californians to gain access to health care, the quality of that care, the growing population of people without health insurance, and whether the government should take over from the much criticized private health care market. Four hours of straight talk just werent enough. The programs won some prestigious journalism awards, but the health care landscape has not improved in the last six years.

In fact, the health care delivery system has devolved into a true crisis with a burgeoning uninsured population, emergency rooms drowning in marginally sick patients and unable to care for true emergencies, and the out-of-pocket costs to those with health coverage escalating daily with increasing premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and prescription drugs. Health care costs have risen steadily, and now account for 15.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Health care spending is double what is spent on education. And in 2020, 31.5% of the gross national product will be spent on health care, according to one noted economist (PDF).

So, why hasnt government stepped in to offer some controls on a situation that is spinning quickly out of control. The federal government is paralyzed into inaction on this front. Perhaps the Iraq War has sapped the energy and creativity in Washington. So now, the states are leading the way. Massachusetts and Vermont passed laws in 2006 to achieve universal coverage.

Whats ahead for California? Four bills are kicking around in the Legislature, with the governor vowing to veto the Democrats push for a universal health care system administered by a state health commissioner who would oversee a state health care agency, Senator Sheila Kuehls SB 840. But the governor and other Republicans recoil from a government administered health care system and raise images of the Canadian (read Socialist) system.

Instead, Governor Schwarzenegger is on board for some form of universal health care legislation which will maintain a private marketplace including private insurance companies, and a mingling of public and private interests. And hes using his legendary political skills to forge coalitions to convert his persuasive rhetoric about universal coverage into reality.

It is generally agreed by health policy experts that what California does to reform health care has the potential to set a nationwide model. But the California Legislature is set to adjourn on September 14th and wont be back in session until 2008. What chance is there that something substantial will be passed before then by our elected officials eager to begin their three-and-a-half-month vacation?

Historian Henry Adams, the grandson and great-grandson of presidents, wrote that the American president resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek. The voyages that our American presidents have steered on the ship of state are some of the brightest adventures that any nation has experienced since the dawn of civilization.

When George Washington became president in 1789, other national leaders included the king of France, the czarina of Russia, the emperor of China, and the shogun of Japan. Today, no king rules France, no czar rules Russia, no emperor rules China, and no shogun rules Japan. But the office of president of the United States endures.

The United States invented the idea of a president serving as head of state. When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; Im beginning to believe it, quipped Clarence Darrow. Very few nations have a governmental system that allows anyone to become the leader of the country, in this case, the most powerful in the world. Our presidents have been highly educated and barely schooled: Woodrow Wilson earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University, while Andrew Johnson never attended school but was trained as a garment maker and wore only suits that he himself had custom tailored.

Our presidents have been filthy rich and dirt poor, generals and civilians, professional politicians and utter amateurs, sober as a judge and drunk as a skunk, eloquent and barely articulate, handsome and plug-ugly. In the past century alone, the White House has been occupied by the son of a Presbyterian minister, a schoolteacher, a peanut farmer, a failed haberdasher, a former actor, and the son of a failed California lemon rancher.

Virginia, Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts have furnished most of our chief executives, but such widely scattered states as Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan, and California have also sent native sons to the White House.

The framers of the Constitution could not have envisioned the power that the president now holds to influence world and domestic affairs. Our forefathers and foremothers could not have dreamt that presidents would be the subjects and objects of so much intense interest in their philosophies, opinions, policies and personal lives. During this most passionate and protracted presidential campaign in American history, I am pleased to share with you the feats, fates, families, foibles and firsts of our American presidents.

Check back next week for more presidential trivia from Richard Lederer.

Richard Lederer is the author of more than 3,000 books and articles about language and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series. He was a founding co-host of A Way with Words on KPBS Radio. Lederer will be talking about his newest work, Presidential Trivia, at a KPBS Lecture Series event on Wednesday, September 26.