WP: How to slap a happy face on misery

[MountainLaurel]

A recent federal report on racial disparities in health care was quite uplifting to read, sort of like a State of the Union address on medical treatment. As Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson sees it, the disparities in health care aren't so bad, and the situation is getting better every day.

"Never before have Americans had so many primary care providers, specialists, hospitals, and health plans from which to choose," says the report, which was released by HHS last week. "Except in the most remote frontier areas, some form of health care is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

And if you're living in a remote frontier area, like, say, Southeast Washington, where access to health care dropped precipitously with the closure of D.C. General Hospital, you can take heart from this:

"Recognizing the superiority of the U.S. system, patients come from around to globe to benefit from health care available nowhere else," the report says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33876-2004Jan21.html

Now, of course half the U.S. population itself can't benefit from this healthcare available nowhere else, because they have no insurance, because their HMOs and PPOs won't allow them to get the latest and most medically appropriate treatments, and because they lost faith in this mighty private healthcare system ages ago.

[Nadienne]

1. I still get a kick out of Tommy Thompson

as Secretary of Health and Human Services.