Excerpt: from an imaginary letter written in 2015
by Al Franken to his grandchildren

from: The Truth" with jokes, by Al Franken, Dutton, New York, 2005

"When your Granddad started his radio show back in ’04, I thought the biggest problem in America was dishonesty in public discourse.  I had spent a great deal of time and effort combating it.  But as I learned, day by day, about all the problems facing our country, I started detecting a common thread.  Whether it was the crisis in veterans’ benefits, the causes of bankruptcy, the pressure on corporate pensions, or the health of our nation, there was one root cause.  It wasn’t Ann Coulter, as bad as she was.  It was the fact that America, unlike every other developed nation in the world, didn’t guarantee that every one of its citizens would have access to health care.

"At that time, America spent a far higher fraction of its income on health care than any other industrialized country, but got far less in return.  In terms of health status and patient satisfaction, the U.S. was at the very bottom.  And Americans were the fattest people on earth.

"For decades, opinion polls had showed that large majorities of Americans supported it.  But since the 1940s, every time universal health care had been proposed, the special interests" the drug companies, the insurance companies, the for-profit hospitals owned by the Frist family" had killed it.

"Now the game had changed.  Government was finally aligned with the special-est interest of all: the people.  And the people got what they wanted and needed.

"This sent a message to the special interests:  You’re not so damn special any more.  Get over yourselves.

â??The national health system saved America a mind-boggling amount of money and lives by adopting new information technology.  The transition to a more high-tech system was overseen by Newt Gingrich, who was in turn overseen by a team of ethicists.  The number of hospital deaths caused by medical error dropped from 98,000 a year to 12,000...

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