One of the major reasons why I also think that the US health system is broken, is the simple fact that medical bills is the leading cause of bankruptcies.

There are of course several other reasons, but that one, is probably the biggest.

I'll take the higher tax, combined with universal health care, that we have here in Denmark anytime.

I want to shove this article in the face of every right-wing a**hole who has ever told me or any other woman how we're on welfare because we're lazy, immoral and uneducated.

Great points Kristjan and bifemmefatale.

I would also say that stories like these were all too common even before this current crisis... they're just (finally) getting some attention now. And hopefully the US will take some steps towards making true reform and building compassion.

This:

Yet Pierrette hardly complains as she recalls the turn of events that changed her life so drastically. "It has made me a better person," she says. "It's an opportunity to turn poison into medicine."

is so typical. It's not that I think she's stupid for being so optimistic about it all - great. But why not complain? The history of the welfare state is one of people who never ceased to "complain" - and you won't exactly find excesses like these in, well, here in the netherlands or the scandinavian countries. maybe I'm being terribly european here but sometimes I am baffeled with the sheer individualism in the US. Sometimes it's still ok to ask what the nation can do for you and this realization seems to be completely absent from her view of what happened to her.

I'm sorry but I think it's baffeling.

The thing is peoples situation would have been precarious either way.

If we would not have a reccession now, inflation would have kept going up eroding safings if salary increases kept pace with the inflation. If not people would have been priced out of the market sooner or later and there you have your recession.

"why not complain?"

Perhaps Dr. Pointsett believes, like my mother who was of the first generation in her family to be born American, and experienced hardship as a woman, as a member of an immigrant family, and as a member of an ethnically discriminated group (Japanese in the US in the buildup to, during, and after WWII, when Hawaii was not even a US state), that complaining, crying, or wishing things were different (as I admit I often do), are often unproductive. With her current state of health, my mother says she could spend her life at home in bed or on the sofa, worrying about tripping over her own feet, breaking a hip and dying in a care home within two years; or she can move on with life, as she has chosen to do.

My mother, like many others particularly of previous generations, was unjustly denied opportunities available to her, despite her own efforts to succeed. Why did she become an award winning teacher with a master's degree, working three jobs and winning scholarships to put herself and two younger sisters through school, and later getting a master's degree while pregnant; instead of becoming the engineer she wished to be, back in the 1950s, when she reported she was outdoing almost all the young men in her class? Because her father (a Japanese man born in 1899, who despite his own educated background in his home country, worked the pineapple fields in Hawaii since age 15 for 25 cents a day), believed that women shouldn't work. If women did work, then they should be teachers. (He himself became a teacher and school principal in Hawaii, before WWII. When my grandfather became a target for government and military harassment as a teacher in the local Japanese community (he once said it was the worst time in his life), he went back into agriculture, remaining a prominent figure in the Japanese community.) Yes, that thinking is more recently recognized as bullshit, but there was little that individuals could do about it 50 years ago.

My mother once told me about 20 years ago, "Back then, we didn't believe we had the right to be happy," in contrast to many people who grew up more comfortably like myself, and may take our lives and opportunities for granted; or in contrast to those again like myself, who believe that everyone deserves happiness as a matter of principle. A local (and home country) Japanese saying is, "It can't be helped."

Of course people have the right to complain about the challenges they face, particularly when unfair or unjust. Women, the economically underprivileged, people of color, and many minorities have a particularly raw deal. Dr. Pointsett's situation should be seen as tragic, from any perspective. Not only have she and her son been denied their previous life, the community has lost someone who provided her community a necessary service as a physician.

Apparently, Dr. Pointsett or my mother found it more useful to make the most of the situation they were given, or as those who became activists or politicians, doing something about it.

Coping with recession may be hard at first. With localized rising unemployment
in different regions now resulting, more and more people in-directly connected to the mortgage fiasco are been drawn into financial difficulty. Not only is it bad for Americans, but lousy U.S. economy hits the whole world hard. The U.S. bailout measures are good for everyone worldwide, if the cash advances being made work like they're intended to. However, some are insisting that the bailout is going to wreck the budget and make the deficit explode. Obama and others insist there will be cuts made that will make up for it. Regardless, let us hope that the short term loans we're making will help to bring back the U.S. economy.