The Sun Interview
The End Of Insurance?
Andrew Coates On Fixing Our Broken Healthcare System
It’s appalling that one person’s illness would be an opportunity for another to make money. The care of human beings should not be a commodity.

Andrew Coates On Fixing Our Broken Healthcare System
It’s appalling that one person’s illness would be an opportunity for another to make money. The care of human beings should not be a commodity.
Throughout it all, I put one foot in front of the other, watching the gray ribbon of road unspool beneath me.
Recently I was invited to give a special lecture at the university where I teach. I accepted the invitation though, contrary to what my sons might tell you, I don’t really like to lecture.
On my very first hospital run I picked up this long-faced, country white guy who’d survived seven surgeries in the last five years. He looked to be late eighties, all but dead, but friendly in a half-deaf way.
It’s like the French Revolution. One by one, prominent men are wheeled out to the guillotine and dispatched. Of course, the present-day “deaths” are metaphorical. Garrison Keillor is still alive, just out of sight. But “Garrison Keillor,” the charming, folksy, self-deprecating Midwestern humorist, is dead.
I want to say that, when I sent my photos to the agency, I was looking only for love, not surgery or money or a visa. But this is only partially true.