I just spent five days in Las Vegas on business. It was the first time in almost twelve years that I had been there and, with any luck, it will be at least another twelve years before I return. 

Don’t get me wrong, I know that there’s more to the town than the fabled neon lit strip that I was confined to and that the “real” people of the city are phenomenal people.   I’m referring to the unreal world of the casinos and hotels.   The strip is weird enough on any given day but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve been to Las Vegas on Halloween night.

But that’s another story for another time.

As an observer of people, a Las Vegas casino always gives me ample subjects to observe.  I watched all sorts of high rollers, low rollers, hookers and bookers doing what they think they do best.  It’s a world that I don’t really understand but, from what I think I do understand of it, it’s a world that I really don’t want any part of.  It’s not because I’m a prude – it’s just not my glass of iced tea (or however the saying is supposed to go).

I did think that I was getting mooned the morning after but it turned out to only be some girl in a black leather thong in spike-heeled leather boots.  She was arguing with her boyfriend about whether or not some guy was hitting on her (I can’t, for the life of me, imagine why that would even happen . . .).

Even if I was prone to get caught up in all that kind of imagery that Las Vegas builds up, it would have all been put into proper perspective when I received a phone call from my daughter who lives in Colorado.  I answered my phone to hear her sobbing. She had slipped on ice while checking her mail and wanted me to talk to her while her friend was on her way to help.  She was pretty sure she had broken her leg.

I wanted to do way more than that. I wanted to be there. I wanted it to be my leg that was possibly broken.  I wanted to personally take my little girl to the best hospital in town.  I wanted to do what all dads want to do and that’s fix the whole situation.

That’s what I wanted to do. What I had to do was sit on the phone with her, helpless to fix the situation, while we waited together.  We prayed, talked and prayed some more when one of my daughter’s neighbors stopped to helped. Long story short: she broke her leg in two places and had to have surgery.  But she’s fine and healthy and that’s all a parent could want and ask – especially when we couldn’t be there to help.

This whole event has, again, made me think about fantasy versus reality and I’m not talking about Las Vegas during Halloween this time. The fantasy involves health care.  My Libertarian sensibilities tell me, theoretically at least, that everyone should “just be insured”.  That’s not so much fantasy as it is being overly simplistic.  I’ll admit to at least that much.  Equally simplistic is the thought that the government can provide medical care to everyone “free of charge”.  Someone does have to pay and it’s usually profitable businesses and employed individuals who pay high amounts of taxes to the government and those “turnips” are about bled out, so to speak.

The reality is that something needs to be done to make our health care system accessible to those in need while not jeopardizing the quality of the service that our country is known for.  I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that there are smarter people than I who can figure this stuff out.

And, while it’s a muddy line between what we want and what we have to do, we’ve got to figure this thing out in a way that’s affordable and sustainable. We can’t just leave it to a Vegas-like crap shoot.

Such are the muddy lines between the things we want and the things we have to do.