Just before the holidays, I had my annual dinner with longtime friends -- all political liberals.

My friends' son, now in college, asked me a health care question as I munched on a delicious dish of short ribs. "If you're against government health care insurance, what should poor people do? What, just screw 'em?"

Having known him since birth, I was taken aback by not just the question. I knew that, like Custer, I sat surrounded by liberals. But the harshness of the question surprised me.

Because Republicans, like me, reject the John Kerry-esque argument that "health care is a right not a privilege," liberals believe we see a bipolar world -- those with the money have health care, and to hell with those who don't.

So I said, "This is a somewhat complicated question, but the short answer is free enterprise."

"Free enterprise?"

"The reason health care isn't accessible to so many people is because of government interference. For example, a medic in Iraq who attends to fallen soldiers -- but is not an M.D. -- could not return stateside and open a practice. My aunt worked for over 30 years in a maternity ward. She told me that many times the new interns would say, 'Nurse Maggie, what drug should I use, and what kind of dosage?' Yet laws would prevent my aunt from opening up a pharmacy."

"Do you think something like this will happen?"

"It already is," I replied. "Several pharmacies like Walgreens now open up many clinics and provide cheap health care for low-income people."

At this point, his father jumped in and said, "Really? I never heard of that."

"You never heard," I said, "that drug stores like Walgreens now have in-house, walk-in medical clinics so that people can get care for medical problems, the kind of treatment that most people need -- noncomplicated, nonsurgical procedures?" Continued...