"What's the matter with them?" Flowers voice was strained and puzzled. "Tuberculosis is no problem. We can cure it easily. Why do they let themselves die?" She stopped in front of the worm-eaten plywood partition and raised her face toward him. "Because it's cheaper. It's all they can afford. You've made good health too expensive. A few months of bed rest," she said wearily, "a hundred grams of dihydrostrepomycin, a thousand grams of PAS, perhaps some collapsed-lung therapy, some rib resections. That girl has never seen more than fifty dollars all at once. If she lived to be a hundred she couldn't save half the money necessary for treatment."

1962.