Unexpected

When we found out we would be moving, about 10 months ago, we made a list of what we would like in our next house.

The house we ended up with does not match our list.  At all.

1.  We wanted a ranch with a finished walk-out basement.  We got a two-story with an unfinished basement that does not have potential for finishing.  (There are doors out the basement to the backyard, but they can hardly count, as the whole point was that the basement be habitable.)  But.  At least we got a basement at all.

2.  We wanted a house in the country with, minimum, a half acre lot.  We got a house in a neighborhood with a quarter acre lot.

3.  We wanted a house with brick.  Most of the houses in the area have brick... this was not an extravagant desire, it seemed very attainable.  But we got a house with no brick, just faded gray vinyl siding.

4.  We wanted a gas stove.  We got an electric stove.

5.  After our first house, in North Syracuse, we swore we would never again buy a house with a corner lot.  We have a corner lot.

6.  We wanted a house with natural woodwork.  We got a house with white woodwork.

7.  We wanted a three car garage.  We got a two car garage.

8.  I really, really did not want a glass shower door.  I have a glass shower door.  And it is not in pristine condition.

9.  I did not care about a whirlpool bathtub, did not really want one.  Guess what?  I got one.

10.  I wanted a broom closet.  But there is no broom closet.  No pantry, either.  Yet.

11.  We did not put this on our list, but we had spent the past 18 years upgrading our old house, getting rid of pale beige "plush" carpet in favor of more attractive, more resilient flooring and replacing vinyl bathroom floors with ceramic tile.  Shortly before we sold that house, we had replaced everything except the carpet in the walk-in closet in our bedroom.  The house we bought took us back to ground zero: seven rooms and a hallway of pale beige "plush" carpet, two bathrooms with vinyl floors, and a master bathroom with a combination of vinyl and (oh please) pale beige carpet.  Yes, there is pale beige carpet in my master bathroom.  Heavy sigh.

12.  The kitchen in this house is about as far removed from my taste as a kitchen could possibly be.  I cannot think of any combination of finishes that would be further from my taste than this kitchen.   Some days I simply feel as though I am mucking about in somebody else's kitchen; most often I feel like I'm in a beach house rental.  The bizarre choice of pastel-ish colors contributes to this impression.  The counter-tops are a cloying pink-beige, somewhere between salmon and very light terra-cotta clay, perfectly flat laminate with absolutely no pattern or texture.  The cabinets are blond, sort of a light skin-color.  The floor is 8x8 square ceramic tiles in a peachy-beige, not as pink as the counters, but pinker than the cabinets.   And the wide grout lines are dark gray, so the pattern of squares jumps out violently.  The backsplash is done in 4x4 white tiles, like a bathroom, but blessedly inobtrusive.  The hardware on the cabinets is all shiny yellow brass, as is the kitchen sink faucet, which is corroding horribly.  The sink itself is yet another ghastly shade of pink-beige.  The walls are a soft, sea-foam green which would not be a bad color if it actually matched anything, and if I could ever get past my quirky personal revulsion for living long-term in the color green.  So you see, multiple shades of pinky beige, blond wood, sea-foam green walls, bright yellow handles... it's pastel and beachy.  Light and bright.  But.  The appliances are black, and so is the rubber base cove molding.  A huge black refrigerator juts into the middle of the kitchen, blocking traffic.  Sometimes it goes beyond feeling like somebody else's kitchen and makes me feel tired.  And sad.  I would never in a million years have picked this kitchen.

 (This was taken while we were trying to get moved in, but it is still messy, 

as there is nowhere in this kitchen for storing large items like, 

for instance, a blender or a food processor.)

(The kitchen I left behind)

So I could complain.  I could whine and moan and struggle against what I have been given.  But, the fact of the matter is that God hedged us in until we bought this place.  It was not our first choice, or our second or even our fifth.  Somehow, God stripped away all our other options and this house was the one that was left.  A house I never, ever would have picked on my own.

So I have to believe that this is where God wants us.  He directed our path, put His hand on the circumstances, and brought us to this house.  And if this is where God wants us to live, then He must have a reason for wanting us to live here.  He has a purpose.  He has a purpose.  He does not do things carelessly, and He does not make mistakes.  The fact that this house is so completely different from what we were looking for makes me think that God worked diligently to place us here.  It is so unexpected, so unnatural, so hard to explain, barring His active will at work.

We must be patient and wait, hoping expectantly that God will work all things for good, as He promises.  Someday, we may be blessed to understand why He brought us here, specifically.  I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with decorating or earthly comforts.

In the meantime, we can be thankful that our neighborhood borders on this beautiful park where we take lovely, long walks.  God willing, we can work on changing the kitchen and -- I hope! -- getting the carpet out of our bathroom!

Losing history

I was fortunate to be able to visit my parents over the weekend.  It was my mother's 81st birthday.  These are precious days.

Shawn drove me.  I was planning to help drive.  It's an easy drive, no cities, mostly beautiful Wisconsin countryside.  The fall colors were still vibrant, and I felt the smile of God on me as the van chugged along the road and the dogs napped in their crate behind us.  I was planning to help drive, but I didn't feel good, so Shawn shouldered the burden and did it all.  Eight hours seems so minimal compared to the old eighteen.

I love the Midwest, everything about it.  I love the big blue sky and the spreading fields, the neat red barns and even the names, German and Swedish and solid.

In my parents' town, people know me.  Some of them I remember, although I remember faces more than names, and with the passing years, some of the faces look familiar but changed.  The eyes and the smiles are the same, but the colors are gone, replaced with white hair, pale skin and more wrinkles.  I want to know these people, and love them, and talk about old times with them.  They remember when I was a little girl with big brown eyes and shiny braids.  They are part of my history.

I am young when I am there.  I was barely more than a teenager when I left, and that is how they remember me.  Getting ready for church Sunday morning, I sat on the floor in my old bedroom and applied lotion to my legs.  I saw myself in the old, long mirror on the wall.  In dim light, lines in my face disappeared, along with gray hairs and spider veins.  I didn't look much different than I had looked at nineteen, when I was just getting to know Shawn, wondering how it would turn out, peering into the mirror as though it could answer questions about my future.  Now the future I wondered about is over and done: I married and raised four children.   Who would've thunk?

Back home in Illinois, I have no history, and this is where the loneliness stems from.  Nobody knows me here, what I was like as child or a teenager.  Nobody knows what I am good at, or what I am afraid of, or what makes me happy, or my allergies.  Renee Louise always used to make sure that there was fruit salad without kiwi in it for me, way back when.  Way back when.

I am almost willing simply to adopt someone's idea of me, and become that,  just to have something that I can be.  Any identity seems preferable to no identity.

How can one's identity be so bound up in one's history?  Who even am I?  For so long, I was primarily the mother of Shannon, David, Laura and Jon.

It's funny.  We changed churches when Jon was small.  I realized, in the new church, that I had lost my identity as the pregnant lady.  I'd been pregnant pretty much the whole time we'd been at the previous church.  I was the scattered, struggling, pregnant mom with too many kids.  And then, suddenly, I was not.  I was the mother of four school-aged children and nobody had known them when they were babies.  Nobody even knew that I was good with babies, or that I loved babies.  My youngest was six, and we did things like soccer, homework and piano lessons.

And now I've lost it all, even more.  Yesterday I went to the IGA to pick up some bratwurst for supper.  We live in the Midwest, and I just had a hankering for brats.  The lady ahead of me in line had a nice conversation with the check-out boy who, I gathered, was a drumline captain in the local marching band.  I wanted to say, "Hey!  Just last year, I was a marching band mom!  My son played trumpet!  Everybody loved him!"  But I didn't say anything.  The check-out boy politely greeted me and asked whether I'd found everything I was looking for.  "Yes, thank you," I told him, but I was talking about the bratwurst, not all the things I've lost that I will never find again.

I wonder how I would feel if I met someone who knows someone that I know, someone from Minnesota or New York.  I wonder if that would help?

The last time I moved, I created a new history for myself, over twenty-five years and pouring myself out into the lives of my four children.  I became a person with a new history.

But I wonder if I am too old to go through all that again.  Before we moved here, I dreaded starting all over trying to make a house a home, and wondered if I would die about the time I finished, if I finished.  But now I am beginning to see that it is not just a house.  The house is quite an external part of it.  It is my history.  I don't think I have it in me to create another history.  Again.

Results are in...

The results are in from my biopsy.

They are negative.  I am ok.

God is good.

Thank you.

Breast pain

If you are a man, you may not want to read this.  Just warning you.  I mean, you may have already figured it out from the title, but I want to make sure you are fully informed.  Some topics addressed in this post will be uncomfortable.  In fact, even if you are a woman, you may not want to continue reading.

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When I was an early teen, like all early teen females, I began to develop breasts, and this was excruciatingly embarrassing to me.  I had no desire to grow up, and would have happily stayed straight, skinny, platonic, asexual, genderless, and neutral forever.  I did not want to be a woman.  I most certainly did not want to be noticed for being a woman.

The solution was to hide in loose, floppy clothing as much as possible.  Since it was the late seventies, this was quite possible, peasant blouses being plentiful on the fashion scene.  I didn't know whether it was more mortifying to be seen with a curve on my chest or a bra strap showing through my shirt, so I compensated with layer upon layer of gathered calico.  Sometimes I didn't have enough layers to vary them throughout the week, so I wore the same things over and over, more willing to bear the humiliation of repeated outfits than the humiliation of exposing my development.  I hated breasts, despised, loathed and feared them.  And yet, there they were.

One spring day I was walking home from junior high, walking diagonally across Sorenson Park.  It was sunny, and my book bag hung heavy in my right hand.  As I walked, the book bag banging into my leg at each step, a pressure began to build in my right breast.  It was quite uncomfortable.  I wrapped the handle of the book bag more tightly around my hand and soldiered on, trying not to breathe too deeply, because something was catching in my breast with my deeper breaths.

At one point, the pressure increased suddenly and intense pain exploded in my right breast, reverberating and expanding.  Involuntarily, I leaned forward and cried out, pressing my left hand to my chest above my breast as though I were saying the pledge of allegiance, but the other-way-round.  Nobody was near me, but at a distance people populated the park.  Although I felt as if I might fall to the ground, I was determined not to call attention to my breast.   I did not look down to check whether blood was running out of my nipple as my senses suggested.  Pulling my right arm in as tight as possible to my side, using my left hand to rub my ribs where they joined my right shoulder, I continued moving forward, forcing myself to breathe, forcing myself to take steps.

By the time I arrived at home, the pain had subsided.  I never said anything to anyone about this experience.  I was too flushed with shame, and I didn't know how to explain it, anyway.

Since then, I've always felt lumpy, tender spots under my arms.  Under my arms.  Ha.

When my children were babies, I used to bathe them together.  Once as I was soaping one of them up, I said, "Let me wash your armpits," and the child said, "Mommy has big armpits!"  Another child (just as wet and soapy) replied in disdain, "Those aren't armpits.  Those are milks."  I never bothered to correct that terminology.  I liked to think of them as milks.  I felt it reflected their most noble purpose: nourishing infants. 

I always felt happy and surprised that my lumpy, tender milks were able to feed four babies.

"Do you do breast self-exams?" the doctor would always ask, and I would hem and haw, and not be responsible and talk about what I felt.  "They are tender," I would say.  "I have a fair amount of breast pain."

Then the doctor, an older gentleman with strong, warm fingers, competent, reassuringly clinical, would quickly check me himself, and it seemed like he was being thorough.  I always felt quite safe and relieved after the doctor's exam.  He never found anything.  Then they'd send me for a mammogram, and that never showed up anything, either.

But I knew that what I was feeling was up under my arm, in the part that never came under the rays of the mammography equipment.

Then my sister got breast cancer, and over the course of a number of conversations, I somehow learned that the doctor had found her cancer, her lump, and it was a tiny slippery thing that moved back and forth and was easy to miss.  Her mammogram had missed it.

On October 21, one day before I had a scheduled doctor's appointment, I was bathing and washing my armpits.  Once again, I thought I felt something.  This time, I somehow had more guts than usual.  I put a finger down firmly to trap it from one side and came at it from the other side.  I caught it.  It was there, a lump, a bump.  A specific thing.  After I almost fainted and then recovered myself, I decided it was good that I already had an appointment scheduled for the next day.

The doctor sent me for a diagnostic ultrasound, and from there they sent me for a core biopsy, which I had Thursday afternoon.

Core biopsy.  You go in, and they find the lump again with the ultrasound (actually, they were looking at two lumps), and they mark your skin with a pen to show where stuff is.  Then they get you all ready for the procedure.

You're already lying on your back with rolled towels propping you in such a way that your breast is at the top, the apex of your being.  They frame the breast with pieces of blue cloth, like a draping, but somehow different.  It lies there, a poor, crumpled pile of shriveled flesh five inches above your head.  A nurse swabs it with betadine, painting it orange which in this case is perfectly appropriate, as it is Halloween.  The betadine is cold and smells disinfecting, somewhat reassuring.  Nothing hurts.

"Now you will meet the doctor!" they tell you cheerfully, and in he comes to the sight of your orange breast lolling above your head in pitiful anticipation.  He has dark hair, slightly rumpled, and dark eyes, slightly owl-like.  You don't remember his name but that's ok because he surely doesn't remember yours.

They go to work on you, and you are glad that you cannot see their instruments.  Needles are the theme.  As I gather, there are needles to inject lidocaine to numb you, and then a hollow needle that goes in, with the ultrasound guiding it, to rest snug against the lump inside your breast.  When that needle is placed perfectly, they say, "Now you will hear a snap, but you should not feel anything uncomfortable." I don't know what they do then, but my impression is that they pull some sort of trigger that shoots some sort of sample-gathering needle down through the hollow needle and smack into the lump where it obtains the necessary cell sample.

During all the sticking and imaging and prodding, I closed my eyes and prayed and thought about God.  I recited Psalm 23, lingering on, "He restores my soul," and, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

I quoted Joshua 1:9 to myself, "Be strong and of a good courage.  Be ye not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.  For the Lord thy God is with thee, withersoever thou goest."  I like it in King James.

I remembered 1 Peter 5:7, "Casting all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you."  I reminded myself of Psalm 145, and even though I couldn't remember the exact verse, I knew that it says God is good and full of lovingkindness and He has compassion on all He has made.  I thought about the caring, compassionate, faithful nature of God.  I couldn't think of any more specifically comforting verses, so I just started searching my memory banks for any random verses.

I thought of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  I thought of God as the Almighty Creator who cares for me, and, my eyes still shut, I smiled.  Then I realized that all these people could see my face, and I wondered how weird they must think me, smiling away silently with my eyes closed.  I decided I didn't care.

They got ready for the first snap.  "In just a moment, you will hear the first snap," they told me, pulling me out of my spiritual reverie.

Snap went the equipment.  I felt it.  My body convulsed involuntarily, and an explosion of pain spread all the way to the sternum side of my breast, then began to grow and expand.  I had not been prepared for such intense pain.  By the grace of God, I responded calmly.  "That hurt,"  I told them. "It hurts, actually, quite a lot."  I lay still and tried to breathe, but the memory of being 13 and walking across Sorenson Park in exploding breast pain came flooding back to me, too real and close.

They scrambled to stick me full of more lidocaine.  I did not complain.  The second snap, in the same lump, was much less painful, and the three snaps in the other lump were painless.

They injected metal markers into the lumps, cleaned me up and sent me for a baseline mammogram.

Since the lumps had never before appeared on a mammogram, it was interesting trying to get a mammogram to pick them up now with their shiny new markers.  The professionals had promised a gentle mammo, but I really had to contort in order for the technician to get the images she needed from my armpit.

Finally it was over, and they bandaged me up and sent me off with an ice-pack in my bra.

They have asked numerous times if I have questions.  What question is there to have before the results come in?  Percentages?  I figure the percentages are meaningless.  I am me, and either I am clean, or I am cancerous.  It makes no difference what happens to other people... I mean, what?  Would you expect them to say, "The chances are about 10% that you will have cancer.  We did 14 people today, and we already found 2, so you are probably good to go."  I just don't think that's the way it works.

I'm a little concerned about the pain.  I don't think that was "normal."  Also, my sister just had breast cancer, so there may be a genetic predisposition.  And I have lupus, and 30-33% of people with lupus develop cancer, so I could scare myself silly thinking about this.

On the other hand, this lump is very different from my sister's.  They never even biopsied hers; they did immediate surgery to take hers out because it was something they knew they needed to take out.   I am pretty sure that I've had mine for years and years, that it is not new, and that it has merely gone undetected for decades... undetected and not growing.  Also, a number of women have shared with me that they had similar biopsies done and that theirs turned out to be nothing.

It is in God's hands.  We will find out tomorrow.

Falling off the gluten-free wagon

So I have lupus, which results in inflammation.

And gluten is an inflammation trigger.

So I was told to go gluten free.

Mind you, I don't have celiac disease, or anything like that.  Gluten doesn't give me any immediate, catastrophic trouble.  But I worked on going gluten free.

We have no bread in our house.  Just ask my husband.  He misses toast.

I have not made any financial investment in eating gluten free.  I just try to avoid gluten, and really, it isn't that hard.

For breakfast I can have oatmeal.  Since I don't have celiac disease, I don't worry about whether my oats are milled in a gluten free factory.  I eat oatmeal, often with bananas, walnuts and maple syrup... or golden raisins, craisins and brown sugar.  I also eat eggs.  And smoothies.  I drink orange juice and tea with cream, or sometimes coffee.  This is no hardship.  If I want to get fancy, I cook up a tasty vegetable frittata with cheese.

Lunch is not my favorite, but then, it never has been.  I don't particularly like sandwiches.  When I lunch at home, I usually have a banana with almond butter (or sunbutter) and some yogurt.  Then I pick at apples and almonds and -- if I'm lucky and have them -- Beanitos chips.  If I go out, I get a salad with chicken on it, or a bowl of soup without noodles, like the harvest squash soup at Panera right now.

Dinner is actually very easy.  We eat meat, potatoes and vegetables.  Or we eat meat with rice and vegetables.  What is hard about that?  Dairy free, that would kill me.  But gluten free is not so bad.  I can even thicken gravy with cornstarch.

So I was trucking along, not eating gluten, generally just being really good, faithfully picking the croutons off my salads.

And then Tuesday.  Oh my.  I went to Bible study in the morning.  It's kind of an early morning for me, so I only had a smoothie for breakfast, along with my tea.  I left Bible study early for an 11:30 doctor appointment.

At the doctor appointment, it was decided that I should have a certain surgical procedure taken care of, and because of our insurance situation, they were kind enough to try to hurry the process along to be finished before year end.  They were terrifically good to me, and I am not complaining, but in the end I was there until 3:30 getting the details wrapped up.

At about 2:30, a kind nurse noticed that I was fading (and she probably heard the very loud rumbles of my very empty stomach), so she offered me crackers.

Crackers are not gluten free.

But.  There are certain times when you know that lack of food is going to hurt you far more than lack of gluten will help you.  I consumed 280 calories worth of crackers on the spot (that's two packages of grahams and two packages of saltines).  I had one more pack of saltines in hand, but I hit the end of my water bottle and stopped.

Since then, I've been simply packing away the gluten.  I went to lunch at Panera yesterday and got the squash soup (good for me!), and a whole grain bagel, toasted with butter (oooops).  I came home, and when Shawn returned from his Chicago business trip at 8 p.m., I cooked up a bunch of spaghetti (super pasta with whole grains, omega 3s and extra protein, but not gluten-free).

I don't feel particularly different.

I wonder if there is any point to all of this.

My Favorite Ugly Smoothie Recipe

(If you try making this, be prepared for ugly.  
Don't worry, it tastes much better than it looks.)

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

1/2 cup orange juice

1 banana

2 oz. (approximately, or 1/3 of a 5 oz. clamshell container) raw baby spinach

4 frozen strawberries

Blend together in blender until smooth.  Enjoy.  

If you want it to be truly decadently delicious, 

substitute sweetened vanilla yogurt for the Greek yogurt.  

But really, I find that it is plenty sweet and tasty as is.

Remembering cute...

My daughter sent me a link to the funniest pictures of babies with fat cheeks.  You can view it here.

Looking at the photos reminded me...

Back in the day, when Davy was a little three-year-old, one morning I was in my bathroom preparing for the day.  While I was thus occupied, Davy sat in front of my long, oval mirror in the bedroom, his attention sustained as only his attention can be sustained, turning first one way and then another.

I had no idea what he was doing, but being me, I guess I assumed he was making faces at himself.  Nope.  This was David.  David doesn't make faces (that's the rest of us).  David analyzes.  And at the tender age of three, he was analyzing his appearance.

When I emerged from my ablutions, Davy turned from the mirror and looked me in the eye.  "I'm cute," he explained, "because I have chubby cheeks."

That's the little Mister himself, on the left, chubby cheeks and all.

A response

There was a blog out there a couple of days ago where a mom was explaining to her two young sons why Obamacare would not work.

She compared it to a tax for free entertainment.  You have to pay whether you choose to use it or not. Clearly this is not fair or good.  If young boys in the early grades of elementary school can see that it is not fair to run a system this way, we should all be able to see why Obamacare is no good.

I am generally conservative.  I did not vote for Obama.  But her comparison is ridiculous.  Ridiculous.  There is no comparison between access to entertainment and access to healthcare.

I do not go on cruises.  There are a myriad of reasons for this.  The most obvious one is that cruises are a fairly spendy sort of vacation, and I am very prone to motion sickness.  I have no intention of ever paying that kind of money for an experience that might make me vomit for a week in my claustrophobic cabin.  I might (might) go on a free cruise to test this theory, but there is no way I would ever pay to cruise.  Another reason why I would never pay to cruise is this:  I do not eat very much.  I am picky about the nutritional value of the food I do eat.  And I do not drink at all.  Since cruises are famously all-inclusive, I do not feel the need to pay the money to sit on a boat, queasy, and watch other people overindulge in food and drink that I would not partake of even were I not queasy.  This is the "entertainment tax" in practice: people who go on cruises are paying for the entertainment of the entire group, whether or not they choose to attend an event, watch a show, eat at the all-night chocolate buffet, or gulp down multitudinous mixed drinks.  The more you over-indulge, the more value you get for your vacation dollar.  This is not my kind of vacation and would, in fact, be very stressful to me as I realized how much I was getting ripped off.

But Obamacare, much as I may not like the way he has designed it, is not about paying for other people's fun.  It is about paying for other people's healthcare.  Now, obviously, this is very frustrating when you look at people who are unhealthy because they make bad choices.  No, I do not want to pay for the lung cancer treatment for a man who chose to smoke three packs a day.  I do not want to pay for the diabetes treatment for someone who gave himself type 2 diabetes by drinking four liters of Mountain Dew every day.  It is annoying to be a responsible, health conscious person, and to be asked to pay for the healthcare of people who will not take basic measures to care for their bodies.  BUT at the same time, if I am blessed with health, it is not the end of the world for me to contribute towards the healthcare of the person who got lung cancer from undetected radon in her basement, or the child with type 1 diabetes, or the baby with leukemia, the young mother with breast cancer, the construction worker who was in a terrible accident.

We who have more should share with those who have less. That is a biblical principle.

The problem with Obamacare is not that we all pay into a system, and then some people end up needing to use it more than others.  That isn't the problem with it.  That should be the point of it.  And if we don't need to use it, we should thank God for granting us health.

The problem with Obamacare is not even that it is socialized medicine.  Some things work better when more resources are combined to create the system.  Those who compare a federal medical system to a federal education system have a point.  It is not the end of the world.  I know that there are those who hate the public school system, too, and pull out of it.  I believe that they should have that right, and that people who elect not to use a public health system should likewise have the right to pull out.  But for the good of society, it seems fair to me that we pay our taxes to cover those who do use the public system, whether or not one chooses to use it oneself.

This is not the side of Obamacare that is a problem.  The problem is something that nobody will talk about.

The problem is not that Obama is trying to set up a national healthcare system.  The problem is that he is trying to do it while still maintaining and preserving wildly profitable private health insurance companies.  That is the problem.

Democrats won't tell you about it, because they don't want to admit that this is what they are doing.  They just raise your taxes every year.  You have experienced this.

Republicans won't tell you about it because they are in the pockets of the prospering health insurance company executives and their lobbies.  "Business," it's called.  They just raise their policy prices every year, to stay profitable.  You have also experienced this.

They can't have it both ways.

If you want a national healthcare system that is economical, accessible and helpful, it must be run as a non-profit.  Must be.  Even then, it is probably iffy.  But if this condition is not met, there is not a remote chance of economic feasibility.

But of course, to shut down all our health insurance companies would cause massive unemployment across the country and precipitate yet another crisis.

So what do you do?  I don't know.  I am not that smart.  But I can tell you this: to run a "national healthcare policy" that also integrates continued, significant profits for private health insurance companies will never work.

And who are the big losers?

The people.  Of course the people.

Boom.

I have maintained, and I will continue to maintain, that if you could get the insurance companies and the lawyers out of the healthcare system, everything would settle out in a much improved manner.