The arrangement Mercy Medical Center worked out with Valley-Wide Health Services Inc. to operate three clinics in Durango should be applauded. It should not, however, be seen as more than what it is a necessary measure to shore up one little corner of a national problem.
Major calamities are often hard to see coming.
America s health-care system is an exception. Like some slow-motion film of a train wreck, it is collapsing before our eyes. Most of the time we take no notice because at any given moment most of us are not sick. Moreover, because of who they are and how our institutions are set up, most of those who do need medical attention are now getting it. All that could rapidly change.