This New England

Some art critics say this painting, The Gross Clinic, done by Thomas Eakins in 1875, is the greatest American painting. It portrays work in the Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia.

That the Obama administration has organized a road show of forums around America where the public can discuss health-care reform is admirable.

There was a particularly good one Tuesday in Burlington, Vt., that featured useful remarks by Gov. Deval Patrick, of Massachusetts, a Democrat, and Gov. Jim Douglas, of Vermont, a Republican. Both states have been in the forefront of health-care reform.

The trouble is that most of these forums so far have suggested that fear of for-profit insurance companies will rule the day in the end. It will be politically very difficult to create a system that would be both the most economical and that would create the best health outcomes for the most people -- some sort of a single-payer-based arrangement.

But wait! We have such a system -- it's called Medicare! And even most right-wing Republicans say they want to support that. So why not for folks under 65?

Where could we find the political will to offer this system to the whole population?
New Englanders, I suspect, would be in the forefront of this expansion. Indeed, there was a crowd of a couple of hundred people demonstrating for a single-payer plan outside the forum.

And, yes, they know of Canada's health-care plan just up the road -- a single-payer system, which, despite its flaws, helps make Canada's population much healthier than the U.S. one, though one with fewer high-tech bells and whistles.

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Good recession reading: Bittersweet Beginnings: A Sketchbook of a Great Depression Boyhood, by James V. Wyman, with Linda L. Tillson illustrations.
Jim Wyman's recently published book (published by Plaidswede Publishing, in Concord, N.H.) about growing up in the Brockton, Mass., area during the Depression is a highly evocative and very clear-eyed memoir.

It expertly balances the anxieties and joys of boyhood in a time that might resonate now, in a place now suburban but then surprisingly rural in many ways. Jim, former executive editor of The Providence Journal, told me some years ago he would write this book, and I'm happy he has.

Linda Tillson's drawings are a charming accompaniment.

 Tags  Bittersweet Beginnings James V. Wyman Linda L. Tillson Plaidswede Publishing

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