Darkness before the Dawn?

February 27, 2005

Today in the New York Times there is a harrowing article on a private healthcare company called Prison Health Services that is wreaking havoc through the prison system by providing completely inadequate healthcare for a large swath of the incarcerated population. The headline reads "As Health Care in Jails Goes Private, 10 Days Can Be a Death Sentence." It details several cases, among many, where inmates died from gross negligence directly tied to bare-boned care and incompetent staff.

I can only be relieved that this article did not come out while I was inside, because my poor mother might have gone into a tailspin. (Not that she wasn't in one of them anyway, but the spinning slowed a bit after I was in a few months.) To be fair, I found my healthcare to be fairly adequate, but this must of course be viewed in the context of national system where so many of those treated in jails receive no healthcare whatsoever on the outside. The larger problem, is, of course, a society that accepts the disenfranchisement of a large portion of its population, a society gone so mad for the free market that the unfree don't get a place at the table.

On a lighter note, there is no lighter note. Is it just me, or is everybody feeling out of sorts this weekend? Actually I know it is not just me, because a slew of people I've met in the past 24 hours attested to the same. A woman even starting talking to me while I was vacuuming my car at the car wash and described 8-months of a fruitless job hunt. She was around 60, with a heavy Russian accent, and said she was on the verge of homelessness. She wasn't asking for money, but when I commiserated about being unemployed, she said "we need to get together--people like us--and do something." What that something was, I had no idea. I could only suggest that if she couldn't find a job, she needed perhaps to create one--like cleaning houses. I felt completely lame, as I drove off, claiming an appointment.

All I could do is buy a lotto ticket, and promise myself that if I won, I would track down this poor lady and give her a wad of cash.

MCO 2005

P.S. Anyone interested in constructive change may want to check out "BooksnotBars.Org." They'll get another wad of cash if the Lotto Gods smile on me. No, I'm not holding my breath, and no doubt no one else is.