Many thanks to readers who responded to various points in my February Diary. The segments on razors and health care drew the most emails.
- Razors: The Gillette Fusion has a huge fan base out there. I shall try it. Inevitably I got a few readers wondering why I dodn’t act like a true conservative and go all the way back to the old cut-throat style. The answer is prob. something to do with childhood recollections of adult males going around with bits of cigarette paper stuck on their facial wounds. (Does anybody remember the styptic pencil?) There’s also the whole stropping business. It always looked to me like one of those skills you need to acquire when young. An ill-coördinated doofus like me would lose fingers.
- Healthcare: The entire problem with healthcare is that it’s a risk-reward curve. How far do you want to (or: can afford to) let people go along the curve? About 95 percent of the healthcare that people need can perfectly well be supplied by nursing assistants with a couple of years’ training, or Third World providers like the ones I discussed. When you climb up into the remaining five percent, you are in the zone where real doctors and expensive equipment are needed. Keep going and you enter the zone of million-dollar drugs, teams of specialists, experimental technology, and months of intensive care. A billionaire can of course travel all the way along the curve. Should the rest of us be able to? Our system is organized around the answer “yes.” This is probably untenable. Sooner or later you’re going to die. Get used to it.