Gershom Gorenberg writes in:
A socialized medicine story, after reading your post on Sullivan: 20 years ago my son was born, two months early, weighing kilo and a half, emergency C-section to save my wife's life. A kilo-and-a-half baby hardly fills your hand when you pick him up. He lived in a plastic box, my wife slowly recovered, and meanwhile our birthing-class teacher gave us a book on bringing up your preemie. It was an American book. The largest chapter was on dealing with the financial crisis usually brought on by preemie births and exceeding the ceiling on the insurance policy. It told about couples losing their houses, guys working too jobs and destroying their marriages, the lot. My wife was hospitalized for eight days, my son for 35 in neonatal intensive care. So one day the social worker from the hospital calls me up and asks me how I am. Cautiously, I asked if I had any financial issues. She sounded surprised, thought for a moment, and told me that the hospital asked that anyone who had an operation arrange for two units of blood to be donated. Otherwise I'd have to pay 40 shekels a unit - about $20 at the time. And, she said, I should make sure to register my son for the health fund before we took him home so that we'd be covered for care if he needed it the next day. That's it. I couldn't give blood at the time because of a health issue. A couple friends went down and gave blood. End of costs. This ex-American swears by socialized medicine. It is the criteria for deciding whether a country is civilized or not.
On a related note, Gershom had a great piece today on the death of the Israeli Labor Party.
