The Affordable Care Act also offered protections that allow for preexisting conditions, as people know, that you're provided coverage and you can maintain steady coverage. And that's an important part of being able to stay in care and do better over the long run.

When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew up in, the result is you always had family around to take care of you.

What about regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?

The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.

The Affordable Care Act also offered protections that allow for preexisting conditions, as people know, that you're provided coverage and you can maintain steady coverage. And that's an important part of being able to stay in care and do better over the long run.

This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.

Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.