**Adrift health insurance

Went to a benefit this noon and picked up two plates of fried fish. Down here there is a benefit pretty near every week for someone with overwhelming medical bills. This one was for a friend of mine. She and her husband run a nice little seafood business; they are my principal shrimp source. They work hard, open seven days, the whole deal that the big dogs tell us everybody should be doing. Trouble is, how can they possibly afford health insurance and finance a business and live from one day to the next? Answer is, of course, that there is no way that any ordinary person can afford health insurance adequate to take care of something major, so people go along hoping against hope that nothing major comes up. The lack of a civilized single-payer national health insurance makes us a second-rate outfit compared to other major countries … plus we pay more for medical expenses than anywhere else and do not get superior care for all those bucks we shovel out for insurance.