The Milbank Quaterly | June 9, 2018
Read the PublicationI was at a dingy hotel at Narita Airport, having missed my connection from Washington, DC, en route to the World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office (WHO/WPRO) headquarters in Manila when I got the call I’ve been dreading. My father died, just shy of his 102nd birthday. Joseph Gostin was the decorated World War II vet I wrote about in my last op-ed.1 He was supposed to die 6 months ago, abandoned in a municipal hospital. A man who fought the Nazis but would be rejected by the Veterans Health Administration.