•June 21, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

The best things in live are generally not free. Take health care.

When I was a boy in the 1940-50s, each small town had two or three family doctors. The hospital in the nearby city of 20,000 (13,000 today) was a small, quiet affair where you went until you got well, or died.

There was no Medicare or Medicaid. Nor much insurance. I recall coming home about third grade with a flyer for my parents about how a new company called Blue Cross-Blue Shield was offering a policy to cover me for a dollar a month. Those were simpler times.

Today my friends and I are “doctorin’” all the time, with many specialists. Construction cranes are frequently seen hovering around the latest health complex addition. Hospitals are generally the biggest employers in town.

The advances in health care are coming at us in a blinding cavalcade of change, with our individual DNA the focus of the newest therapies.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.