"A sign of profound desperation"

The Times has a story up that should make us weep, or rage; I'm not sure which. One thing seems certain, though: This country has entered an economic and political landscape that is uncharted, and who the hell knows where we'll end up.

BEND, Ore. — Last month, right after he had the heart attack and then the heart surgery and then started receiving the medical bills that so far have topped $200,000, Melvin Tsosies joined the 91,000 other residents of Oregon who had signed up for a lottery that provides health insurance to people who lack it. [...]

Despite the great hopes of people like Mr. Tsosies, only a few thousand of Oregon’s 600,000 uninsured residents are likely to benefit from the lottery anytime soon. The program has only enough money to pay for about 24,000 people, and at least 17,000 slots are already filled.

Let's consider this for a moment: Health care by lottery. It sounds like the plot of a dystopian movie, perhaps "Mad Max: Beyond Medicaid."

“There’s so much need that there’s really no way you can meet it,” said Chris Coon, the outreach manager for the Community Clinic of Bend....

“Using a random process to decide who gets health care is a sign of profound desperation,” Mr. Coon said.

This is in the United States in 2008, a mere 63 years after we vanquished enemies in two hemispheres and strode the earth as the richest, most enlightened and most powerful nation the world had ever seen. How do we find this even remotely tolerable?