"People on welfare don’t get to live in five star hotels. You can’t use food stamps to eat out at expensive restaurants. Not every accused criminal has a right to representation by Johnnie Cochran or his progeny.
Access to health care shouldn’t be any different, but right now it is the only industry in which, for the most part, the best practitioners get paid the same amount as the worst practitioners."

~

http://www.epmonthly.com/whitecoat/2009/01/radical-ideas-to-improve-the-house-of-medicine-1/

I deal with the idea of social justice differently now.  Before I started grad school, before I got sick, before everything changed, I believed that there was something we could do--as individuals, as Christians, as a society--to make life better for everyone. Or, if not everyone, then enough 'someones' that the world would continue to improve.  My education courses  tell me that by teaching children, we're making the world better.  My history courses used the cop out that "history will judge" if each generation made the world better. (It helps when you don't actually have to make relevant judgment calls)

But reading medblogs makes me feel like there's nothing we can do. Doctors can prolong life and they can perform medical procedures that improve the quality of life, but their system is broken, just like education and academia.  These broken systems can't help everyone.  It doesn't matter how good of a teacher I am, there will be students I don't help.  It doesn't matter how brilliant Obama's new nationalized healthcare program seems, people will still be screwed by the system.  

I don't know why I had such faith in the progressive nature of society as a whole.  Maybe all of those eugenicist writers I spent so much time fawning over seeped into my subconscious. I wonder why I didn't let a little more theology seep in as well.  Since I believe in that unpopular notion of "total depravity," in the individual sinner, I don't know why I hoped that there could be systems that would be free from the same depravity.  Our systems are broken; our world is broken. 

I tutor rich kids.  Because their parents have wealth, they can afford to pay my fees.  If they want a highschool kid, they can pay them $40 less.  There's still a part of me that says I'm not helping the brokenness by taking part in a broken system, but by charging the same as a less-qualified tutor, I'm not helping either.  

I can help one kid at a time.  I'm still struggling with how to fight for justice without declaring war on society, but for now, I can help one kid at a time.