Okay, I confess incredulity at the resistance to a public option in the U.S. health care system. The irrational fear that somehow public health care means the death of grandparents and young children, not to mention the infirm and disabled is the stuff of dystopian fiction. Instead of a public acceptance of the responsibility to care for citizens who are ill, we have a desire to fill the coffers of the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. Ask us for money, and we will pay. Strange. Have grandmothers and wee children died because of public health care in Sweden, Canada, Britain, or France? Or do we put a price on the health of our citizenry? The notion that health should be at the mercy of the open market makes me shiver, gives me the willies, makes me downright ill. Perhaps public health care in the countries I mention above requires retooling because of waste and overuse, but this is no reason to reject a system that has proven workable for thirty years and more. Why countries with so much wealth should refuse to care for the weak and infirm is beyond comprehension. Why a citizenry should fear a government that wants to serve the people is beyond me. This irrational idea that governments cannot conduct business or manage a health care system because governments are somehow more open to graft and mismanagement and inefficiency than private companies is a wild about face to Enlightenment thinking. Government run programs and systems are just as prone to inefficiency as private companies and vice versa. But that somehow governments are going to be inefficient by definition is downright stupid. And I use the word 'stupid' advisedly. Private health care is evidence of the human condition lifting itself out of the state of nature. Freedom, that buzz word that raises instant hackles and an appearance of ordnance hanging from shoulders and hips, is not some absolute condition. The crucial freedoms are freedom of thought, word and movement. And as far as I know, these freedoms are not threatened by a public health care system. We are free to choose doctors (providing our medical schools produce doctors in sufficient numbers to care for our populations), to think what we will about medical practice, and to bad mouth physicians all we want. As for the ordnance, this is just a reminder of intolerance, fear, coercion, tyranny, manipulation, and the loss of the freedoms of speech, thought, and movement that we cherish.

The cut worm forgives the plow. How could it be otherwise? The picture may serve for the thousand words. More later.