Paul Kando lives in Damariscotta.

“When even doctors can’t find doctors, something needs to change,” I read in our Sunday, May 3 paper. Indeed! Corporate capitalism is at the root of what, in the U.S., passes for “healthcare,” or lack thereof.

But health, illness and knowledge are not commodities on which to legitimately profit. Therefore, I consider for-profit “healthcare” an oxymoron. So, couldn’t we change from such centralized corporate control to decentralized, nonprofit caregiver control?

As a teenager in 1950s postwar Europe, my family and I were beneficiaries of just such a universal healthcare system.

Our whole country was divided into circuits, to each of which a resident “circuit doctor” was assigned. He had at his disposal home visiting nurses and other assistants, as well as other doctors to consult as needed. He was paid a decent salary plus expenses and provided an office and subsidized family housing in the community.

His job was to keep visiting his circuit, to (1) counsel everyone in healthy ways of living, (2) diagnose illnesses, (3) distribute or prescribe (no cost) medicines as required, (4) treat and help heal sick people in their homes, and (5) arrange for pubic, nonprofit hospital or sanatorium care (including transportation), if needed.

Our family’s beloved circuit doctor, Dr. Zimmerman, came by to see us once or twice every week, more often if needed.

Our healthcare was free from a public nonprofit system. It was also economical. For instance, with people’s existing homes doubling as (free) healthcare facilities, the cost of most hospital/ nursing home rooms was eliminated. So was the need for their maintenance, support personnel and any corporate markup on it all.

Even very ill people were routinely cared for at home by our circuit doctors. Clarisse, my maternal grandmother, for instance, a (back then sadly incurable) cancer patient, was treated at home until she died. Dr. Zimmerman even taught my mother how to administer morphine shots for her pain. Circuit doctors routinely taught people to appropriately home care.

Of course, such a free public healthcare system was made possible in part by universal access to housing and tuition-free education. We had no homeless people, and our doctors received their education and diplomas without becoming indebted. They needed decent but not disproportionately large salaries.

In such a nonprofit system, illness is not treated as a loss — but as part of life. So, insurance companies have no legitimate role — certainly not in selecting medical procedures. To me it seems absurd to subordinate a whole “health” system to “health insurance” companies. That is not healthcare, but protection from the Great American Itch to sue — in which case jurists make decisions, not doctors, so the decisions are no longer “medical.”

As I rethink the U.S. health insurance system in which we are stuck, I remember our loving home-based healthcare and Dr. Zimmerman’s guidance. We had no purchased for-profit corporate services and facilities. Our actual healthcare need was then, as is now, public support for the loving care we already provide at home.

And — imagine! — under the guidance of a “circuit doctor” we don’t need to search for.