Fables for Adults

Dear Dr. Sowell,

When I was a child (before medical insurance), our family physician had two waiting rooms. I asked him once why we always sat in the same room and what the other room was for. He said it was for poor people, people who couldn't pay. Given that my family was just making ends meet at the time, the poor people must have been really poor.

Granted the two waiting room system was classist and rather inelegant, the fact that the "poor people room" existed proves that then doctors viewed themselves as healers and not just business men. Like a father who paid for his child on the installment plan, this doctor carried out his hypocratic oath as the people in the other waiting room entered his examining room one...