![\"GRBJ0728\"](\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/GRBJ0728.gif\" "\\"GRBJ0728\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, October 5, 2009<\/p>\n Sometimes the comic I end up drawing isn\u2019t the one I wanted to draw. I wish I could blame this on somebody — my editor, my parents, the Man. But the truth is, it\u2019s me: there are times I simply can\u2019t come up with a suitable idea for the topic I\u2019m feeling particularly passionate about. I imagine it\u2019s something like a songwriter wanting to pen a love song for his soul mate, but instead of, say, The Beatles \u201cI Will\u201d or Ben Folds \u201cThe Luckiest\u201d he keeps ending up with \u201cMacarthur Park.\u201d (Now just try to get that train wreck of a song out of your head for the rest of the day.) We Americans, of course, have a higgledy-piggledy system where we all think that (because we are smarter than everybody else) we can end up ahead. Everybody thinks this. But everybody can\u2019t end up ahead. There are extreme winners and extreme losers. There are clever advantages to this and cruel efficiencies. Let\u2019s not judge. After all, it very much reflects our American character. (And the same approach has really worked out swell for our financial system, right?!) Ahem. Anyway, the quote that I got stuck on was this:<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States is the only developed country where medical bankruptcies can happen.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Think about that. The only country in the developed world where surviving cancer can and does ruin people. By quitting a job to take care of a loved one or choosing an uncovered procedure or making unlucky decisions on insurance coverage, you can beat the cancer (or not) and then get to foreclose and start over. That doesn\u2019t seem to me to fit with our American character. At least, it shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, October 5, 2009 Sometimes the comic I end up drawing isn\u2019t the one I wanted to draw. I wish I could blame this on somebody — my editor, my parents, the Man. But the truth is, it\u2019s me: there are times I simply can\u2019t come up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0
\nWhat I really wanted to draw about this week was a quote I read in a Newsweek<\/em> excerpt from T.R. Reid\u2019s new book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care<\/em>. It was a fascinating article (and I\u2019m hoping a fascinating book). The basic premise is that a country ends up with the heath care system that reflects the character of the country. So for example, Canadians make no excuses for having to wait a long time for nonemergency care. That\u2019s how they limit costs. And they don\u2019t mind so long as the rich and poor have to wait the same period. Canadians are thrifty and egalitarian (and care mostly about just staying warm). In Germany, health insurance (private, by the way there is no \u201cpublic option\u201d in Germany but care is universal) will pay for a week at a spa to deal with stress. The British think that\u2019s incredibly stupid and do not pay for it. (Stiff upper lip, the Brits.)<\/p>\n