It Takes A Pillage: Community Clinics Close As War Goes On, Rich Get Richer

I've just read an article that has convinced me more than ever that our priorities as a nation are so much more than out-of-whack.

"County's health system faxes an ax, not a scalpel," reads the title of a piece in today's Chicago Tribune.

The county Trib staffer Mickey Ciokajlo refers to is not just any county, but the second most populous in the nation. That'd be Cook County, which includes the City of Chicago.

Dr. Robert Simon, who is interim chief of Cook's Health Service Bureau, has cut $130 million from the budget this year. Ten community-based clinics -- many of which can offer treatment and advice that can proactively reduce the need for costly emergency services later on -- have been closed.

Meanwhile, these closures have taken place at the same time we are busting the budget in Iraq, private equity has grown obscenely corpulent with tens of billions it does not even know what to do with, and the makers of pharmaceuticals these clinics supplied keep on raising their prices.

I wonder if those community clinics would have closed if they were in Kirkuk- not Cook.