Hospital corridors

A good friend, British by birth, has been in pain since about the 4th of July, needed an MRI, couldn't afford the co-payment; another friend who has barely enough to live on gave him the money for it, at considerable sacrifice to herself, and I took him for the procedure this evening. This left me brooding about the American medical system, the American class system, Roger Michael Moore's movie SICKO, and all the reasons why poor people can't get health services in this wealthy country, while right-wing politicians go on railing about "entitlement" programs, about the "debt ceiling," about all the reasons why there should be no provisions made for those who end up without health care, and why people who make over $250,000 a year should not pay taxes to help support those who don't.

As we were sitting, waiting for my friend's turn to get a test that might shed some light on the pain that has immobilized him, he said to me, "I've been reading a biography of Clement Attlee. I love Clement Attlee. I think of him and get tears in my eyes. There's not a value that man had, that I don't share."

I came home and googled Clement Attlee and found inWikipedia this quotation from Clement Attlee, and it seems to sum up all I was thinking about:

"In a civilised community, although it may be composed of self-reliant individuals, there will be some persons who will be unable at some period of their lives to look after themselves, and the question of what is to happen to them may be solved in three ways--they may be neglected, they may be cared for by the organised community as of right, or they may be left to the goodwill of individuals in the community. The first way is intolerable, and as for the third: Charity is only possible without loss of dignity between equals. A right established by law, such as that to an old age pension, is less galling than an allowance made by a rich man to a poor one, dependent on his view of the recipient's character, and terminable at his caprice."

Odd coincidence: Clement Attlee took office on the day I was born.