Several years ago I had surgery from which I fortunately recovered quickly. While I was in the hospital following the surgery, a nurse brought me pills to guard against any pain I might be feeling. She said I could take them whenever I needed to, as they apparently weren’t habit forming.

Fortunately, I don’t remember feeling much pain. I recovered quickly and soon stopped taking any pills.

Later we learned about the efforts of some in the pharmaceutical industry to push as many pain pills as possible in order to make as much money as possible. Apparently the medication was pushed whether the pills were needed or not or whether they might be dangerously addictive. (As we found in frightening ways, some indeed were.)

Sam Quinones, in his book, The Least of Us (True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth) tells a horrifying story of this shameful part of our past, when addiction was ignored so drug makers could make more money.

The story reveals how we too often see illness or injury as a part of the consumer culture: a way to make money, not as a need for healing.

I champion capitalism as long as it pertains to buying and selling the normal goods of a society and as long as capitalists pay their fair share of taxes.

However, any caring society, it seems to me, will do better if all people have access to safe and basic medical care, whether they are rich, working/middle class, or poor. Children, especially, should not have to depend on the income of their parents to grow in a healthy, safe environment.

That means, for me, seeing certain activities like the healing and treatment of illness as a public good, closely regulated to encourage good health, not to feed our normal capitalist system.