Slate's Bizbox
the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990
from: Katha Pollitt

Hospital Sushi

Posted Friday, April 24, 1998, at 2:18 PM ET

Andrew--So, given your commitment to lots of medical care, am I right to assume that you oppose cuts in the British health care budget? Maybe if the system wasn't so cheap your dentist would have sprung for some Novocaine.

I wasn't defending small health-care expenditures. I'm all in favor of everyone getting everything they need . I was making a point about health and health care as related to other social values. For instance, awful as your childhood dental experience was, at least you had a dentist! In this country, lots of people can't afford any kind of dental care (it mostly isn't covered by Medicaid) and are just out of luck.

What's the situation with people who are HIV positive and don't have private health insurance that pays for the drug regimen? I think I remember a news story which said they were getting too expensive for Medicaid. And the 40 million people who have neither private insurance nor Medicaid--what happens to them?

Talk to you soon,
Katha

PS. I love Japanese food. Better a thousand nights of sushi than a single meal of baked beans on toast. Your portrait of Japan is funny, but if they were really as timid and mingy as you suggest, they wouldn't be so healthy and long-lived. (Unlike the British, who I think are not so healthy in general.) We're always reading about Japan's weird side--the businessmen reading sado-porn comics on the morning train, and schoolgirls moonlighting as prostitutes, people eating potentially fatal blowfish just for kicks. And, of course, the incredible level of sexism, conformity, pollution, hideous modern buildings and so on. I'll bet their newspapers carry the same sort of stories about us.

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990
from: Katha Pollitt

Hospital Sushi

Posted Friday, April 24, 1998, at 2:18 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post