All Things Considered

A while back, Robin Boros lost her job, and she and her husband couldn't afford health insurance.

One time, Boros passed out, and her husband called an ambulance.

"The hospital bill, it was atrocious," she says. "We couldn't pay it."

They never figured out why Boros passed out. But after that, she and her husband avoided going to the doctor. At times, she says, she even bought blood pressure medication on the street.

"That was awful," Boros says. "But you do what you got to do."

Chief Justice John Roberts has been called to task by conservatives for siding with the more liberal justices to uphold President Obama's health care law. This week a CBS reporter said Roberts switched his views after at first siding with conservatives. Justices sometimes change their minds after the initial conference on a case as they circulate draft opinions, consult with colleagues and think about the issues. What's unusual was the leak which was an apparent attempt to undermine the chief justice. Nina Totenberg talks to Robert Siegel.

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He is director of publishing at the Library of Congress.

The work of William Faulkner looms as a mountain too high to climb for many readers, with his long, complex sentences and shifting point of view. But Faulkner's famously tangled mix of literary techniques meant nothing when I was about 12 years old and picked up a copy of The Reivers.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

It's time now for your Letters, but first a correction. On Friday, in our weekly chat with sportswriter Stefan Fatsis, we talked about Wimbledon. And during the chat, we incorrectly said that player Andy Murray hailed from England when, in fact, Mr. Murray was born in Scotland.

As listener Bob Carter of Cornelius, North Carolina points out: Calling a Scot an Englishman is as quick a way to a bloody nose as would be confusing a Slovenian and a Slovakian, or a German and an Austrian.

Well, now to your Letters.