Here's a good example of why we need national healthcare insurance. Recently my poverty-stricken son without health insurance developed a nasty flesh-eating rash. He went to a local clinic in Ft. Lauderdale where the nurse practitioner told him that he needed to see a dermatologist ASAP. She gave him five names to call. Not one would see him, giving excuses like "We have no openings" to "We're not accepting any new patients."

A few days later, as the rash was getting worse, he went back to the clinic out of desperation. The guy working at the reception desk remembered him and listened to his tale of woe. Then he said that his mother worked for a dermatologist in Boca Raton and maybe she could help him out. He called his mother, told her my son's predicament, and she got him an appointment with her boss. The dermatologist treated my son for a severe staph infection. Knowing my son's financial situation and lack of health insurance, he only charged him $100 for the treatment and follow up visit.

My son was lucky. He could have died if the infection were not treated. But in a so-called civilized society should situations like this occur? Poor people without health insurance are at the mercy of a system that forces them into slipshod clinics or emergency rooms where proper treatment is a crapshoot at best. Yet we continue supporting a health insurance paradigm that leaves out 40 million people like my son so that drug companies, large insurers, and mega hospital corporations can make exorbitant, even obscene profits. What's wrong with us?