Somewhere, Over the Rainbow
I find it stunning that, in this promise-everything-to-everyone political climate, we have made medical care virtually unavailable to 20% of our citizens. Unwilling to compromise the universality of Cat-Scans and $1,000 a day prescriptions, we have no basic medical care for poor mothers with sick children, other than emergency rooms at whatever might be their nearest hospital.
The rich are different than the poor and always have been. There’s no shame in that, it’s what being rich is all about. If there were no difference, why would anyone bother becoming wealthy? But because that reality doesn’t play well in the OZ world of American politics, we are destined to have the least effective health care for the highest costs in the world.
Forty to fifty million without care is despicable, a morally reprehensible state of American medicine that led the author, James Michener, to opt off the dialysis machine that kept him alive. Michener ultimately found it impossible to claim as his own that …