Try a little tenderness

I was listening to NPR this morning (Surprise, surprise) and WAS surprised by a discussion about healthcare reform. Here is the synopsis: Robert Siegel talks to New York Times columnist Nick Kristof about his friend and college roommate Scott Androes, who was diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer. In two recent columns, Kristof wrote about Androes, who didn't have health insurance at the time of the diagnosis. In Thursday's paper, Kristof writes that Androes drifted into a coma Sunday and died Monday morning. You know what surprised me as well as the NYT columnist Nick Kristof? That a lot of people wrote in to the columnist blaming his friend for not having health insurance to cover his medical needs. In the end, however, those people that may complain, as well as you and me, paid for the meager healthcare he did receive because, well, sorry to say...he accumulated a lot of bills that he couldn't pay for. Hmmm...Universal healthcare might just be the answer to that little problem. But what REALLY surprised me was the amount of animosity Nick Kristof got about his friend-kind of a "good riddence mentality" to his friend's death. Wow. I guess the whole adage of "treat others as you would like to be treated" means that many people in society are self-harming?