Doug, this morning on the Diane Reims show on NPR, the topic was health care and a man called in to tell about a relative in Tennessee who needed emergency care. His family took him to one hospital who wouldn't admit him because he had no health insurance. He was driven 40 miles further to another hospital that wouldn't admit him. Finally, the third hospital admitted him but he died in treatment.

I have a good (but expensive) health care plan but it gets more expensive every year and it changes just about every year. This year because of a change in carrier, we got a bill for $7000 for physical therapy. When we investigated, it turns out that it was a mistake and that the insurance would pay for it but the real shocker was that my insurance only had to pay 1/5 of those charges. While the insurance negotiates for payment (in this case $80 per treatment, the uninsured are charged $400 per treatment! That means that the insurance companies and the hospitals are conspiring against us and there IS no "free market" health care. The corporations and insurance companies are like the "company store" in the song 16 tons". We have to fix this corrupt partnerships between insurance companies, drug companies and politicians or we will all owe our souls to the company store. There is so much "free enterprise" mythology sold to us packaged as the American dream. We have to shake it out ourselves because congress is chained to the special interest troff. The world of politics changed since the idea of representative government was conceived so we have to change the rules. Diane Reims suggest a million man march on Washington. We have to do things like that.