Do We Live Too Long Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Do we live too long?

I have been listening to a program on TV BBC about Health service
which in Britain is said to be too costly because we are living longer?
Longevity should be celebrated and not seen as a burden
like the old should be guilty of being aged.
Portugal which a relatively poor country, take the Health service
for granted, but of course, it is a country where the timeworn are respected
When I collapsed at home in Portugal, it took the ambulance
twenty minutes to get here just in time to get my heart started again
I was fitted with a pacemaker, and it didn`t cost anything.
In Britain, the ambulance would not have been in haste, and I shudder
to think what it would have cost had I lived in the US.
We should be grateful for the National Health Service in Europe.
It is the young and the rich, who want to privatise the service,
the young because they can`t imagine getting old, the rich
because they will not pay more taxes and use private health service
of the posh kind with soft seat and no waiting line.
I`m glad I live in a civilised world where illness and cost do not include compere
where saving lives are the mark of culture.