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by Mark Silva Garrison Keillor, who has suffered a brush with mortality, has a prescription for a nation in need of the sort of care that he got: Reform, with "common humanity.'' The comic writer, amateur singer and impresario of A Prairie Home Companion writes today of the care he found at St. Mary's Hospital at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota following the minor stroke that he suffered recently. He writes of the tenderness of the female nurses, considerate and compassionate, unlike the men, more inclined to wheel one around "like a cadaver.'' He writes of being that "67 y.o. man'' in the charts who never wanted to be a "67 y.o. man'' and still harbors the restlessness of a 27 y.o. man. And in conclusion, though this is no 1,000-page bill with a trillion-dollar 10-year cost estimated, offering little help with the debate at hand, the good Minnesotan writes this: "Rich or poor, young or old, we all face the injustice of life -- it ends too soon, and statistical probability is no comfort. We are all in the same boat, you and me and ex-Gov. Sarah Palin and Congressman Joe Wilson, and wealth and social status do not prevail against disease and injury. "And now we must reform our health insurance system so that it reflects our common humanity. It is not decent that people avoid seeking help for want of insurance. It is not decent that people go broke trying to get well. You know it and I know it. Time to fix it.'' (From a 2007 file photo: Garrison Keillor is pictured above rehearsing for "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. (Photo by Ann Heisenfelt AP)