Our current system isn't up to it. My husband's mother has a rare form of cancer that is wrapping around her esophagus and metastasizing throughout her lungs, neck and eventually her brain. She has difficulty swallowing and is in constant pain. She has to measure her life expectancy in days, weeks and months. She can't count on more time than that.

What is her HMO doing? Not much. They said surgery to remove the tumor when it was initially discovered months ago was not possible. They said they could not use radiation. Instead they gave her an old chemotherapy drug that is not effective on the type of cancer she has, because they have to "cut costs". (Read increase profits.) The chemo drug was toxic to her. She nearly died from taking it. Her blood values dropped across the board and it took two weeks in the hospital to get her white count up to the point where she had an immune system. Now the HMO is putting off any more treatment for her at all. She is desperate. She is dying and she knows it.

I just want to ask while you are expressing concerns about "our own system," if you have ever sat across the table from a loved one and held her hand while she told you, "I'm afraid to die. Please don't let me die alone." There is nothing like it except for watching your husband almost die because he has a rare illness and his insurance company does not want to pay for a full recovery. In that case I was lucky because the non profit hospital intervened and helped him. Now, right off his own illness he is watching his mother die because her for profit HMO decided at some point that her life was not worth saving. This is our own system. We need something much better. I don't care who we emulate. I want people like my mother in law to have a chance.

As I sat and tried to comfort her, seeing all the while how emaciated she is, covered with bruises which appear spontaneously and with no hair from her botched chemo, I realized that aside from love and my promises that she will not die alone I don't have anything else to offer that will help her live. How did we get here? We are in a place where corporate entities are deciding who is fit to live and die based on their profit margins. It is time for something new and different, and really, what does it matter where it comes from if it gets us out of the mare's nest that greed stuck us into?