I write this tonight as my mother is sleeping fitfully in her room, a few steps down the hall. I'll just be dozing tonight as I'll have to be getting up to check on her every few hours. I brought her home from the hospital about four hours ago. As I start this essay, I have no idea where it's going to end up. I just have things on my mind and I want to get them out of my head and onto this screen; a nice little Christmas Eve exorcism, if you will. The past few days have been, for me, like a trip through the looking glass into a place that I simply cannot wrap my head around; an example -- just one example, I assume of many thousands or even millions of examples -- of just how badly broken the health care system is in this country. And this is probably one of the more mild examples, because at least in this one, nobody died...
Every word you will read here is true. There are no fabrications. There aren't even any exaggerations. There don't need to be.