What do you call someone who is opposed to making healthcare available to everyone? A patriot? An idiot? I guess it depends.

In some of the poorest countries in Europe and elsewhere, people have to resort to selling their organs (yes - kidneys, even lungs) to pay for the basics they and their family need to survive. Macabre but true. See the article in today's NY Times at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48008837/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/?gt1=43001

At the same time, there are those in the United States, hardly one of the worlds hard luck economies, who feel it is offensive, perhaps even treasonous, to consider healthcare a basic service - like public education or a pension system for the elderly. These patriotic folks all have private healthcare insurance of some kind, so it isn't that they want to deny themselves. They want other people to be free of the burden of affordable healthcare. Perhaps this is some kind of punishment for not working hard enough, or getting bad grades in school, or being born into the wrong family, or just being unlucky. Whatever the crime, the penalty is severe. You are to go untreated when you're ill or injured, or have to declare bankruptcy to pay medical bills. Alternatively, you could just die.

The advanced economies of the world have all come up with working, affordable solutions for providing their populations with healthcare. All except the US. For us, it's a matter of principle, of political freedom - we will not succumb to affordable healthcare! We will fight it to our last breath.

Who thinks like that??

I've been thinking about dementia lately. My focus on what most of us quite naturally would prefer to ignore is in part due to a thoughtful article in TIME by Joe Klein on the subject. There has also been news lately of a potential therapeutic breakthrough. But mostly, I think about this because my mom is in the late stages of the disease. 

It occurs to me that dementia is a process of death by subtraction. We lose stuff that's important to us - memories, for example, and language, and mobility, and awareness of who our friends are, and then of who our children are, and finally of who we are. It's mostly a slow process, though there are times when abilities or memories disappear overnight.

At the end of it all, before death arrives but once most everything else has gone, those observing the process are left wondering - who is this person? Without our memories, our ability to speak, and perhaps (though this is hard to determine) our thoughts, who are we? Our eyes may still shine brightly, we may smile, enjoy something to eat, hold a hand, but who are we?