One guilty pleasure I rarely get to take advantage of these days is the "read an entire novel in one weekend" opportunity. First of all, books that make you want to read the entire thing in one sitting are pretty rare. Second, who has the time? Sunday afternoon and late into Sunday evening, I packed away Ken Follet's latest, Fall of Giants. One word: WOW! After Pillars of the Earth and World Without End and what seems like a thousand other amazing books, he's done it again. And, better still, it is the first book in a trilogy that will carry 5 families from the early 1900's through the Cold War.

For those of you who haven't read Follett, many of his novels weave their sagas through real historical events. In the case of Fall of Giants, it takes 5 families (1 each from Russia, England, America, Germany, and Wales) through the early 1900's and into the early 1920's. You are learning about history while being entertained. The relations between English aristocracy and the working class contrasted between similar class relations in Russia were extraordinary to see at the level Follett presents them. The fact that both Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas appeared to be in completely over their heads was remarkable to behold - Follett clearly makes the point that hereditary monarchies were incredibly poor systems for choosing rulers. Also, aristocratic titles didn't necessarily make people military experts as the British found out at the Somme.

If you're looking for a great read that packs action, romance, and adventure in with a series of interesting perspectives on life in the western world about 100 years ago, grab Fall of Giants. You won't be disappointed. The only thing I'm disappointed in is that the next book in the trilogy isn't coming out until 2012!

I had a whole different agenda ready, but an article in this morning's Berkshire Daily Living email blast had a story that caught my eye. The AP story Scanners and pat-downs upset airline passengers makes me wonder how - or if - people think.

Lest we forget, it was less than 10 years ago that 19 Muslim extremists hijacked 4 commercial airliners with box cutters they had smuggled onboard. We all know the end result of that day - the Twin Towers down, the Pentagon hit, and thousands of Americans dead. Is it really that much of an invasion of anyone's personal privacy to prevent that from happening again? 

Here's another question: Is anyone really naive enough to think that we can let our guard down even slightly at this point? I firmly believe that the only reason we've been as safe as we've been the past 10 years is because of the increased security measures, the increased wiretapping, etc. Given that a few crazies have managed to sneak through security (the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber) and a few other plots have been stopped in advance, I would tend to ask if the government doing enough; I certainly wouldn't complain that it is doing too much.

Call me crazy, but in the choice between public safety and civil liberties, I'll take public safety any day.

According to the 2010 Physician Workforce Study by the Massachusetts Medical Society, practices across Massachusetts are having trouble recruiting doctors and as a result, patients are having trouble finding doctors to treat them. Berkshire County's situation was labeled "critical" by the report's authors. See Amanda Korman's article Study Finds Doctor Scarcity (Berkshire Eagle, 10/20/2010) for more information.

Is anyone at all surprised by this? I'm not. Who didn't see this coming? The physicians I know have said it is flat out impossible to attract good talent here because:

1) The patients are disproportionately elderly so the job of being a primary care physician here is much more stressful than places where the population age distribution is more normalized. Each patient session takes more time, often because there are a plethora of drug interactions to worry about from all of the prescription meds so many seniors depend upon. One doctor I know said, "You have no idea how nice it would be to have a day with 10 or 12 kids with strep throat come in. That's easy. Instead, more than half of the the patients I see are in their 70's and 80's who have 5 different things wrong with them, 4 of which are serious, and they are on 12 different drugs to manage their care, leading to all kinds of unforeseen interactions and complications. Every day is a grind."

2) The patients are disproportionately covered by some form of government health care plan, which means lower reimbursements and therefore lower incomes for the doctors versus states where a larger portion of the patients are covered by private health care insurance.

Hmmm ... let's see ... I can move to MA and earn less and work in a more stressful environment or I can move someplace else, get paid more, and have it easier ... Not too tough of a choice, is it?

What a mess we've found ourselves in. Our population is aging, young people are fleeing our state to seek opportunity elsewhere, and doctors don't want to practice here. Access to quality health care is a huge factor in any decision for a business to relocate to a region because businesses know this is something their employees care deeply about. We've created a situation in MA that is leading to doctor shortages and the costs of the government programs are drastically exceeding original projections, which means we will likely have to raise taxes and fees. At a time when we need to create real jobs here more than ever, we can now add, "Too tough to find good healthcare," and, "The government just keeps adding taxes and fees," to the list of reasons a business could use to justify not selecting MA as a new home.

Here's the bottom line ... while equal access to health care is a right that no one should be denied, being able to pay for that access is a personal responsibility, not the government's. Just look at what is going on in Europe right now after 40 or 50 years of socialized medicine. It is a disaster - governments from London to Berlin to Madrid are implementing "austerity measures" to save their economies because the spending commitments for entitlements are so out of hand.

We can't ignore the reality. No matter how much we wish it were different, it just isn't working.