It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

I am reading New York Observer restaurant critic Moira Hodgon's memoir It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. When homebound on vacation, lacking money, there is little you can do but eat, read, watch television, or spend your hours from link to link on the internet. I could exercise, like I did yesterday for 20 minutes in the Phoenix heat, but that's almost like spending the vacation pulling my own teeth . Or cleaning.

The story she has to tell is slight; an attractive woman bouncing from locale to locale, and the food along the way. Everything is a bit carefree and unencumbered by anything heavy going on in the world.

Today there was a bump in her road. Midway through the book, she ends up having to lose an eye, and what caught my attention was not so much her plight, but how England's health system served her.

"I went to one doctor after another, first on the National Health and then, at great expense, on Harley Street, where the names of thedoctors were written in Arabic and the waiting roomswere filled with women shrouded in black, accompanied by their male minders. Dr. Casey was stumped. He sent me to Dr. Green, a few expensive doors down."

(p.217)

We eventually discover she has a tumor, and must get the eye removed. Then, on page 226:

"At last it was time to get a false eye to replace the clear plastic retainer I wore in my eye socket. This service, like everything else to do with my illness, was provided for free by the National Health."

That was then, another time and place and country. But it is a glimpse, probably, of what Obama and those hoping for healthcare reform wish to see here. In other words, more options, but with a base level of service that is affordable, if not "free." Most of us are not naive enough to believe anything is free; the money always comes from somewhere.

However, when it comes to healthcare delivery, it does make sense to get everyone involved, and everyone paying something, or taking some responsibility, in order to approximate a version of "free" that serves the largest number of people, while still allowing the individual to spend extra or in a fashion they see fit on additional services.

As to the book itself, it's interesting, with no overwhelming strengths, other than being a page turner filled with tidbits of this and that (recipes, locales, the ease of life for an attractive woman with well connected parents). I have the looming suspision there will no moral truth or moment of ephiphany or purpose by book's end, leaving me with that cotton candy feeling in my brain.