SAN MIGUEL COUNTY - Longtime Watch Newspapers columnist, author (Cut and Run: Saying Goodbye to the Last Great Forests of the West) and thorn-in-the-side chronicler of the misdeeds of corporate and bureaucratic miscreants Grace Herndon lost her decades-long battle with breast cancer Monday night, at approximately 11 p.m.

Gracie, as she was known to her family and friends, died at 85, surrounded by her family at home at the Herndon ranch, near Norwood.

Alert, feisty and stubborn until the end, Gracie went down swinging. Her final Dateline: Wright's Mesa column, submitted just last week, was about the decline of availability of hospice and health-care services in the western San Juans.

“Well, here in the Norwood and the San Miguel area,” she railed, “we’re about to lose our home health care. Some 30 or more patients with chronic home-nursing needs expect to be cut off.”

She didn't bother to mention that she was one of those 30-something home-nursing patients whose very existence was threatened by the latest round of cuts.

Instead, Grace focused on driving home the by-now ludicrous terms of our national health- care debate.

“If we can’t save home-nursing care locally, how can we save National Health Care reform?” she offered up for readers to contemplate.

Back in August, following President Barack Obama's Town Hall appearance in Grand Junction, Grace wrote this: “In the raging national debate over health-care reform, I’m one of the grandmas in question – the ones people are talking about 'pulling the plug' on."

She went on to weigh in on how Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had brought “the national discussion to an unimaginable low” with her loose, irresponsible talk of death panels.

“Still," she reflected, "my profile fits the general description of the grandmas who might be threatened," she wrote. "I’m 85 (and happy to be here, thank you), and have recently been hit with some pretty major health issues. And although I’ve been on Medicare for some years, I haven’t been a costly patient. Luckily, I also have supplemental Rocky Mountain Health Plan insurance (more on that later). Now, I’m on home health care as well, which for various reasons has morphed into hospice home care. But, despite Palin and company, I can assure you, I do not feel the least bit threatened.

“On the other hand, in the back and forth that we’ve been hearing on the news and seeing on TV, some of the criticism hit home with me. Not the 'pulling the plug' stuff, along with charges of socialized medicine and all the rest – it was the reference to ‘end of life care.’

Going on to profess herself “startled when asked, face-to-face, what my wishes were,” Grace wrote, “I bristled.

"'So just whose business was that?' I inquired.

“Well, apparently this is a required question in this government-backed health-care service. During numbers of televised segments of those often rude, raucous public ‘town hall’ meetings, the issue came up on this part of the plan that even offers guidance, if you want it, on such legal matters as signing a 'power of attorney' document, for example.

“Medicare and these other state and federal health services aren’t perfect, I told myself. And, sure enough, during the national health-care reform meetings, lawmakers agreed that that sort of language indeed had been in the requirements for some time, and it could certainly be removed.

“There are probably many other ways to improve Medicare, but believe me, I am among the millions of American senior citizens who would be in terrible financial trouble without it. Horror stories are everywhere about people who can’t pay their medical bills, must go without treatment and may indeed lose their homes because they can’t make their house payments any more.

“But here in rural southwestern Colorado, we may be the exception. My experience, in recent years, has been that we have remarkable, readily available health care, which is also tailored to be affordable. In addition to two medical clinics here, 24-hour medical care is within an hour’s drive from my ranch home near Norwood. In the mountains to the south, a year-round resort economy supports the federally backed Telluride Medical Center. Norwood itself has the federally supported Uncompahgre Medical Center – plus highly skilled volunteer emergency medical teams and their ambulances and a private medical practice, as well. All this means that, for most of us, medical help is just minutes away. Smart and dedicated people here continue to win grants to enhance all these services – most recently, affordable dental care, for example." She went on to conclude that, although "the grandmas of this nation aren’t going to save the national health reform debate from floundering...somebody should."

A scant two months later, the system she still mustered praise for threatens to betray her.

C'mon, Joe Lieberman, it's time to flip.

Vote "yes" so we can hope we have a future.

Do it for Gracie.