Honestly, my post this week is not my best effort. The intensifying economic stratification of the country of my birth, its neo-colonialism, its bellicosity, its domestic brutality, and much more engenders raw anger—and I find it difficult to write while negotiating such anger.

The intensity of that feeling also re-awakens the anger I felt when leaving the U.S.: anger that "the wealthiest country on earth" gives priority to industrial profit and the wealth of the few rather than the welfare of the general population, and that this plays out tragically where access to healthcare is concerned.

Having left the U.S. seventeen years ago to live in developed countries that support universal healthcare systems, what's clear to me about the U.S. is: Healthcare assurance and practice need not be this way. Might it someday change? I posed that question seventeen years ago, too. Read on for my updated answer.