An affable forty-seven-year-old with an open smile and earnest demeanor, Gary—a long-time family friend of ours—writes prescriptions for diet supplements and refers people to financial aid workers to help with subsidies and tax problems: anything that could help ease their poverty. He shared a telling anecdote he heard from a social worker. “A physician says, ‘Take this antibiotic three times . . . on a full stomach,’ and I always laugh hysterically, and the women I know who are working poor laugh because they know that, ‘Yeah, three meals, like what’s he talking about three meals? A full
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