Faces of a Tragedy

I wrote a couple weeks ago about an interview on public radio which talked about a nation that allows people to die because they lose their job- and health insurance.

This past Sunday 60 Minutes on CBS put faces to that terrible situation. They titled it "The Clinic is Closed" as they chronicled what as happened in Las Vegas since the only public hospital in the state, UMC, closed a number of services due to loss of income.

The story was painful. You get cancer, you lose your job, you lose your insurance. Then you lose your treatment. Sounds like a death sentence.

As one person commented you never think about these things when you are well. You kind of just expect things to be taken care of because they always have been. Without significant health reform we will become a country where people die because they lose their insurance. And they lose their insurance simply because they lose their job.

I repeat what I said two weeks ago: What kind of country do we want to call home?