Accidents happen. Construction is a business with potential and kinetic hazards. Even with hard hats, steel-toed shoes, safety glasses and leather gloves, accidents – like the kind that befell Mr. Hill – will happen. He could not have foreseen that he would pass out behind the wheel. In one newspaper report, he recounted that the last thing he remembered was feeling odd and trying to pull over.

If ever there was a blameless, no-bad-guy tragedy, this is it. There will be lawsuits. There will have to be lawsuits.

Why? Because Ms. Gregory died five days later, because Mr. Marcelino was badly injured. No amount of money can bring Ms. Gregory back, but in the days before her death, I’m sure she ran up an impressive hospital bill. Mr. Marcelino, whom we all hope will fully recover, will likely run up an even larger bill.

I’m not privy to the insurance standing of either person, but I don’t think I run the risk of contradiction by predicting that the kind of medical treatment these two folks needed would quickly outstrip the health care coverage of the average American. Should Mr. Marcelino’s family go bankrupt paying his bills? Should Ms. Gregory’s heirs?

Who should be sued? The owner of the roadside stand was clearly blameless. Perhaps an attorney can make the case that Mr. Hill should not have gotten behind the wheel so soon after being struck on the head. That argument might win in court, but to what end? I doubt Mr. Hill can pay the hospital bills any more than the Gregory and Marcelino families.

No, the only way these bills are going to be paid is by finding an entity with deep enough pockets to pay the cost – and that will be Mr. Hill’s employer. The news has not identified which construction company Mr. Hill works for, but they will be sued, and they – or their insurance company – will very likely pay.

Let me emphasize that none of the plaintiffs will bear ill-will toward Mr. Hill’s employer. The lawsuit will just be another outgrowth of the accident, a tragedy not of the magnitude of Ms. Gregory’s death or Mr. Marcelino’s injuries, but a tragedy just the same.

If this accident had occurred 50 miles further north, there would be no need for lawsuits, because 50 miles north of Williston is Canada. The national health care program there would have cared for Ms. Gregory, Mr. Marcelino and the less-injured people and everyone could concentrate on grief and convalescence.

I find it odd that the same politicians who at this minute are blocking health care reform in America are the same ones who call most loudly for “tort reform.” They claim we are an overly litigious society; that we sue at the drop of a hat. The lawyers representing the Gregory family and Mr. Marcelino are not, however, lurid caricatures of “ambulance chasers.”

On the other hand, it would be wrong to call any lawsuit rising from this accident a search for justice. There is no justice to be found here. In the end, I’m sure the construction company’s insurer will pay the bills and that won’t be justice, but it will be the least unjust outcome.

The construction company’s premiums will rise and in this economy, with rates of construction already down, that will hurt. Perhaps Mr. Hill and/or some of his co-workers will be laid off. Perhaps his employer will shut down altogether, putting everyone out of work.

I don’t think Americans are as litigious as some politicians make us out to be. Yes, there are some frivolous suits in the courts. Always have been, always will be. But because our system of financing health care lacks any shred of common sense, the courts stay very busy with legitimate and tragic suits, like the ones that will rise from the accident on Route 2.

How much does that cost us, as a society? This week, the Senate Finance Committee voted down two versions of a public option for health insurance. Without some means – like a public option – to hold the insurance industry accountable, this kind of tragedy will be replayed, again and again.

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Geese flew overhead on my early-morning paddles and they have continued to fly over my house in Burlington in the weeks since. Summer’s over. Summer, I think, is the only season that’s “over.” I admit, I know a few Vermonters who mourn in March when they have to put their skis away for another year, but it’s not the same. Spring is celebrated for its arrival (“Spring is here!”) and summer for its passing.

Summer was indeed short and sweet in the north country this year. It arrived on July 28th, when the rains finally stopped and temperatures rose out of the 60s. Although it came too late for the gardens and field crops, August was a blessed respite.

And now it’s cool again. The open, south-facing window by which I type, has a 55-degree breeze blowing through. The air is clean and cool, like water.

It was a short summer, Charlie Brown, in more ways than one. The summer I was 12, I broke my ankle playing football against older guys. Instead of the swimming and bike-riding I’d planned for that vacation, I sat on the couch, working the remains of a wire hanger down my cast, trying to scratch. By the time I was healed, school was about to begin.

This summer, America was lost in the morass of the health care debate. Instead of taking care of our many pressing problems, we lost weeks to lies about “death panels” and seeing Congressmen hung in effigy. Wherever President Obama traveled, he was met with people brandishing guns, exercising their Second Amendment rights to the fullest.

(In the mid-60s, the Black Panthers openly carried rifles and shotguns in public. There were few voices in the media defending their Second Amendment rights. The California state legislature tried – unsuccessfully – to outlaw the practice.)

In the chamber of the United States House of Representatives, Congressman Addison “Joe” Wilson (R-SC), in a screaming outburst, accused Mr. Obama of lying while the president was addressing a joint session of Congress.

Was it a racist act? Yes, I think it was – to a point. The other, and perhaps larger point, is that the Republican Party has been in open war against any Democratic president since Jimmy Carter was in office. Maybe they think Richard Nixon was unjustly savaged during Watergate, but Mr. Carter – and the office he held – were treated with disrespect. These attacks were more ferocious during Bill Clinton’s tenure and if the past eight months are any indication, the attacks on Mr. Obama will be more intense than any his predecessors endured.

When they control government, Republicans put themselves at the service of corporations and the richest of individuals, which is why they are currently out of power. Democrats, besides their predilection for ineptitude, are also conflicted. They are better representatives of the aspirations of average Americans, but they too worship at the altar of corporate power, whose goals are at odds with those of Joe and Marge Sixpack. (Which explains the ineptitude. It’s hard to plot a course when you’re trying to simultaneously sail in opposite directions.)

So summer is over and we journey into the cold months of long nights. The president who promised us hope is besieged and does his cause no good trying to find the middle as his opponents drag the debate further and further right.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claims in a fundraising letter that the 2010 mid-term elections will be the “toughest ever” for Democrats. This may be hyperventilation aimed at opening wallets, but it’s true that 2010 will determine the success of the GOP’s campaign of political pillage and burn.

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Today’s New York Times has a story about Ted Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, in which he says President John Kennedy’s “antenna” was up over the misbegotten situation in Vietnam and that he was “on his way to finding that way out,” but was killed before he could do so.

Instead, Vietnam was handed to Lyndon Johnson, a consummate politician, who enacted some of America’s most compassionate social legislation – including Medicare. Republicans of the day scorned Medicare as “socialized medicine” that would lead to the government dictating all aspects of life to its citizens.

Sound familiar? Medicare did not lead to a Soviet-style government oligarchy and neither would the boldest of the health care reforms under consideration today.

Again we have a young Kennedyesque president who looks more Johnsonian with each passing day. No one really knows what went on in Mr. Johnson’s mind regarding Vietnam – he was an unreliable source – but the generals clamored for more and more troops and being a strident anti-Communist hawk would balance his liberal tendencies on civil rights and health care, so Mr. Johnson waded deeper and deeper into the southeast Asian mire.

So Barack Obama, who campaigned to prevent Iraq from becoming a quagmire, now sends more and more troops to prop up a corrupt puppet state in Afghanistan. Troops who have no clear mission beyond killing or capturing Osama bin Laden.

This week, besides Sen. Kennedy’s take on Vietnam, has seen conservative pundit George Will publish a column Tuesday titled “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan” (although he frenetically dances around, trying to avoid typing the “V” word).

At the other end of the political spectrum, Garry Trudeau has devoted this week’s arc of “Doonesbury” to describing the unwinnability of the Afghan war. (He, on the other hand, makes direct comparison to Vietnam.)

The same day the Washington Post published Mr. Will’s column, the Times ran a piece in which Afghan president Hamid Karzai is accused of stealing 23,900 votes in Kandahar in the recent national election. Mr. Karzai’s brother is leader of the Kandahar provincial council and is alleged to have stolen the ballot boxes and stuffed them with votes for his brother. The opposition says that even fig-leaf votes for the opposition were not allowed in the boxes. Sounds the kind of accusations leveled against the Diem brothers nearly 50 years ago. (The complaint from Kandahar is one of 2,615 about the Afghan election received by press time Tuesday.)

Following the scandalous June election in Iran, Mr. Obama was excoriated by the right for not speaking more loudly about the clear thwarting of the will of the Iranian electorate. If that was the case with Iran, with which the US has a frosty relationship, what words does he owe the Afghan people when his political client seems to have stolen an election? And will the American right (or left) demand that he speak them?

So what will it take? Mr. Obama is getting drubbed on his health care efforts, becoming ever more gun-shy and pliable in the face of Republican opposition that is as fact-free as it is vociferous.

As it was in Mr. Johnson’s time, the generals clamor for more troops. Mr. Obama has increased our forces in Afghanistan from 47,000 to 68,000. There will be calls for more; the body count will begin to grow. American cannot afford another president with big ears who forgets how to use them

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Inside, the hospital’s up and running. People cluster in the intake waiting area, still wearing coats and hats and boots. As you move deeper into the hospital and the process, the outer clothes come off and the tags go on.

Suddenly, everyone’s clothes seem out of place, removed from the ordinary circumstances of their lives. They might wear hunter’s camouflage, a sports team logo or a monogrammed dress shirt, but all seem suddenly useless signifiers of identity. Many hospital staff walk around in scrubs, as if they’ve gotten the message and shed their civilian identities. The staff have plastic tags with their names and photos and magnetic strips on the back.

As if to help with the confusion induced by this loss of the normal, hospitals issue everyone tags. The patients get bracelets. Periodically, through their stays, the staff will ask patients their name, then check the bracelet, just to make sure the patient remembers who she or he is.

The patients and their companions disappear into various departments. More waiting ensues, but ends with disconcerting suddenness. Staff members seem to swarm, taking away clothes, bringing out forms, questions, lists of things are read, signatures are needed on acknowledgements and consents, IVs are started, blood thinners and anti-biotics.

The companions emerge back into the outer hospital without the patient, carrying his or her clothes. There have been separations, the patients from clothes and patients from companions. Many companions now have tags too – although insubstantial paper and glue – more generic than the patients’ bracelets. These tags allow companions to go here or there, to see their patient at times defined by the staff in whatever department has absorbed the patient. Many have pagers to alert them to when they can see their patient or speak with a doctor.

The companions wander into the common waiting area. Some seem surprised to see the cold winter sun through the window. They arrived in darkness and now things are changing and in hospitals change can bring apprehension.

The companions sit in various chairs, attending to books and newspapers and puzzles. One woman reads a book on spirituality, half concealed in a magazine. All the companions seem so exposed, their worry too clearly written in their wide eyes and seamed foreheads.

In a large, regional hospital in a small town, the people passing seem at once familiar and strange. You seem to almost know everyone, but no names come to match the faces. The assignment of tags begins to make sense.

A patient in street clothes has sneaked out and sits among the companions, but he’s betrayed when his bracelet slips from his sleeve. He sits alone; perhaps he has no companion waiting for him.

A man walks by wearing an orange t-shirt with the words “Beat Cancer” in large script. He’s the only one whose street clothes don’t seem out of place, perhaps he’s been around a while and learned.

A pager shrieks. All the companions start and grab theirs. It’s hard to tell where the sound is coming from. Some shrieks bring relief, others grief, others more uncertainty.

Everything about a hospital is trying: physically, mentally, emotionally and we all have to go there sooner or later, as patient or companion. There are upsides. Hospitals have a way of putting our day-to-day life in perspective, by reminding us how the designs we wear on our clothes don’t truly represent who we are, how we allow them to draw meaningless lines between us.

Hospitals – and health care – should not divide us either and from the tone of conversations in hospital waiting areas, it doesn’t. People, the ones who get sick or accompany the ones who get sick, understand the need for universal health care.

So who’s stopping us?

© Mark Floegel, 2008

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman compares Barack Obama’s health plan to John Edwards’s and Hillary Clinton’s and finds it wanting. The reason: Mr. Obama would not make health insurance mandatory. People could choose to remain uninsured, then opt into the system if their health began to fail.

Mr. Obama, who otherwise seems like a bright guy, doesn’t seem to get how the whole “insurance” thing works. As Mr. Krugman writes, Mr. Obama’s plan would allow people to game the system by jumping in and out while the folks who act in good faith and buy insurance while they’re still in health get penalized. Not fair.

Over in the Washington Post, Renae Merle describes similar frustration among those homeowners who acted in good faith during the housing bubble. They paid off their credit cards, saved up a down payment, bought only what they could afford.

Again, some people gamed the system, flipping houses, using their inflated equity as an ATM. Now the mortgage crisis is here and what should have been a day of reckoning was postponed when major lenders agreed to freeze interest rates.

In both cases, no one wants to be punitive and cause others pain fort the sake of doing so, but both Mr. Obama’s health care plan and the mortgage rate freeze send the message that there are worse consequences for playing by the rules than violating them.