Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Karyn Frist, an American, had just given birth at Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton, England. She and her husband, William H. Frist, MD, were in England, he on a seven-month assignment from Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Frist, for his chief residency in cardiothoracic surgery, would be exposed to non-heart aspects of chest surgery. He would encounter a variety of heart and lung pathologies doctors rarely see in the United States. Dr. Frist would be the senior registrar, “who assumed major responsibility and performed all of the surgical cases; he or she ran the surgical clinics, [and] made all major clinical decisions.” After that, he would be specializing in heart transplantation at Stanford University Medical Center at Palo Alto. After that, he would be the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. The British nationalized health care in 1948. In Southampton, Dr. Frist, assigned to the Western Thoracic Hospital, notes some striking impressions in his new (...

A Politico critique of Sarah Palin’s critique of the health care bill approved this week by the Senate Finance Committee is described by Politico as “wonky,” and decidedly non-vituperative, which is another way of saying that she can no longer see Russia from Alaska. Of course, anything written or said by Palin is bound to cause apoplexy among her critics, who are legion.