"For Middle Class, Health Insurance Becomes a Luxury"

That's the title of a good article, dateline Dallas, by Stephanie Strom in today's New York Times. The article reports that the folks without health insurance are, increasingly, folks like you and me -- middle class, often with decent jobs, but priced out of the market. Without meaning to sound too unfeeling, this is precisely the development that is needed for there to be any lift under the wings of health care reform. Remember the old saying that a recession is when your neighbors lose their jobs and a depression is when you lose yours? The same principle seems to apply to health care: a health care problem is when 43 million neighbors lack health insurance, and a health care crisis is when you lack it, too. I've yet to read anything about the massive Medicare reform package that includes the new prescription drug benefit (see below) that will do anything to make health care benefits more available to these 43 million Americans.