(From Bob Dotson, NBC News National Correspondent)
Here's a number that'll make you sick. Forty six million Americans have no health insurance. Yet, waves of Baby Boomer doctors are set to retire. A quarter of million have already done so. Two million nurses too. Many still young enough to work. This morning's American Story with Bob Dotson offers a way to change that. A prescription of hope. WATCH VIDEO
I like to tell such stories. Common sense solutions to life's problems. Reminds me of the good people out in Loving County, Texas. The Labor Department said they had high unemployment. Loving County is the largest, least populated county in the country. Six hundred and forty square miles of nothing but sagebrush, rattlesnakes and sand. One hundred and ten people live there. And they all seem to have jobs. Newt Keen, who runs the only cafe in the county, asked, "Would you live out here if you didn't have a job?"
Still the federal government figured there was high unemployment and told Loving County's two shop owners they would get preferential treatment for small business loans. Well, Mattie Thorpe already filled all ten cars and trucks in the county at her gas station. Newt Keen served all the beer he had on stock every day. He used to sell eggs, but stopped. Said he'd seen so MANY eggs, he "couldn't look at the back of a chicken no more!"
A couple of weeks later, the county got a check from Washington to establish a new park.
Officials couldn't get anyone in Washington to take it back, so they used it to buy some extra sleep. Put up and bought an automatic flagpole. It worked on an electric eye. When I arrived at sunset one day, the whole county was over at Newt Keen's cafe placing bets on what time the flag would go in.
Folks like that could send a committee to lunch.
Do you know such people? Drop a note in my mailbox on the Today Show webpage, American Story with Bob Dotson.