I have never tried to pretend there are not people who have serious problems in this area.

But there are not enough of them to warrant the solutions that are being presented by the Democratic Party and others who are trying to create a Federal monopoly on health care.

About 40 million people in this country are without insurance for at least one year. The last accurate census number from 2000 was 38.7 million. This does not mean they never had insurance, or won't have insurance next year, but that's neither here nor there. The number seems to remain relatively constant, even if it isn't the same people.

This is about 14 percent of the population. That's a lot of people, but not a huge percentage.

Of that 14 percent, how many simply don't want or need insurance right now? Of that 38.7 million, 5.5 million have household incomes over $75,000 a year. 12 million have household incomes over $50,000 a year. Are these people who can't get insurance, or just don't bother? I don't have good answers. Motivation and reasons do not come into a lot of these surveys.

And of that 14 percent, how many have real health problems that cannot get them fixed, like you? Or have no access to alternatives? A lot, I'm sure. I have found no numbers to answer this kind of question...just anecdotal things like yours. If somebody has such a link or such numbers, clue me in.

But I bet it isn't all 40 million.

Trillion dollar question: How many people have to be in trouble to justify throwing all of America into a socialized medicine system? How many elderly had enough difficulty with health problems in the early 1960s that it justified destroying the private health insurance system for every last one of the elderly and throwing them all on the mercy of the Federal government?

If I were to lose my wife's current insurance, her MS might make her very difficult to reinsure, even though her condition is relatively stable. COBRA costs an arm and a leg, and craps out eventually. For a few years while I was self-employed I had to buy insurance on the open market, and she needed a special policy that cost quite a lot more. Oddly, the rest of the family was quite reasonable in costs, considering it was through no employer. Don't know if that would still be the case.

Her insurance wasn't easy to pay for, and the policy I found was, for the record, part of a California state insurance program, even though it wasn't free. My next employer was more forgiving about preexisting conditions, and we've lucked out since then--so far. So I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the problems here.

The real problem with the health care system is that it has been separated from market forces for years. People now expect others to pick up ALL their health care bills, even the most insignificant, whether by private insurance or the government, and the prices of the services are what you would expect under these conditions.

If everyone in the country was on food stamps, milk would eventually be fifty dollars a carton.

I don't have an easy way to solve this either. Some method of bringing market forces back into play would help, like medical savings accounts, but that's just one item. Limiting assistance programs to those that really need them would help. Not moving any further than we already are toward government control of health care would certainly help. And you seem to be as aware of that as I am.

Don't give up on getting those legs fixed. There may still be alternatives, but I don't have near enough information to be very helpful.