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While we were moving from Camden Town, London, to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, there was much to do: and Elena did almost all of it. At the outset she made it clear that by far the greatest obstacle we would face -- the most time-consuming and labour-intensive, the most tediously labyrinthine, and the most extortionate -- had to do with American healthcare. One afternoon I gingerly looked into it; and after an hour or two I thought, Well at least there’ll be no ambiguity in our case: if any Amis gets so much as a headache or a nosebleed, it will be far simpler and thriftier for the four of us to fly first class to London, take a limousine each to the Savoy, and then, the next day, wander into one or another of the NHS.
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