Health Care

In the long ago days of my graduate school career at Harvard, I was dramatically helped by my first wife, Mary, who worked as a clerk in Harvard's alumni records office for 99 cents an hour.  We lived on this, since my scholarship money went to pay the tuition in that first year.  Apart from the benefit of the learned faculty and ultimately the rewards of sporting a Harvard PhD at the end of the game, I was also provided with medical care for free.  When once I had an evening in the company of a Wasp grandee of the Harvard establishment, I ventured that it was very hard on a young fellow such as myself with a wife who did not receive free medical care as what I thought was a natural benefit.  He drew back in astonishment:  "Free? For her?  No even a student? But that would be socialism!"  Since Mary was a juvenile diabetic she had naturally more need of medical attention than I did, and we were very pleased as time went by that she did not need anything.  Yet there came the day, when something went wrong, and she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital.  As was the case in those long ago days, there was no talk of payment upon admission, no frantic demand for insurance documents.  And she was there maybe four days, one longer than necessary since the staff neglected to restore her insulin injections after whatever they had done to her, so she threatened to go into a coma and that required extra bedtime.  I guess a good lawyer would have sniffed out a classic malpractice suit there, but we were naifs from Iowa, plus my father had been a doctor who asked only that people pay what they could, so East coast ethics and practices were far from our thinking.  We checked out with a whopping bill for these four days, and within a week a bill collector rang our front door with all kinds of threats.  We had no money.  Not a penny.  I was frantic, and in my delirium walked into the Cambridge Savings Bank and met with a young man, now today I cannot remember the name of this blessed saint, but he later became president of that bank, this I remember.  I murmured and stumbled, he held out a pad and pen and helped me through the figures, and then with no further ado, no guarantees, no security, he had the bank teller type out a check made out to me for one hundred dollars.  I paid the hospital, we worked and scraped and saved the money over a year's time.  The bank never came after us, never uttered a peep; we breathed a sigh of relief, however, when the last penny was paid back.  I remember this in the context of our next door neighbor in the local apartment building, a working class single mom with two small children, who was desperately working two jobs and just managing the rent.  One month her resources failed her and she was evicted.  I in my sweet simple Iowa way had never encountered something like this nor her animus toward her economic tormentor our landlord,who saw fit to forget about boiler repairs and eliminate hot water for months on end which simpleton that I was, I endured.  She was angry and I well remember the day she and the kids pulled out.  She took a heavy chair and smashed in the plaster of every wall in the apartment.  I didn't know that this was what you were supposed to do, stupid sweet Iowa boy that I was, and indeed I have never understood about protests, demonstrations, Stonewall, and on and on, having been content to live off the protests of others.