Healthcare As a Moral Universal

By DAVID INTROCASO In mid-July 3 Quarks Daily posted an essay written by Umair Haque, a London-based consultant and frequent contributor to the online Harvard Business Review, that argued “the American experiment is at an end.”   This is because unlike every other rich country the US lacks, Haque stated, essential moral universals defined as “sophisticated, broad and expansive public goods that improve by the year.” These include higher education, a responsible media, transport, welfare and healthcare. Democracies depend on these moral universals available to everyone because these benefits educate, inform and allow us to lead healthy lives. Absent these civilizing mechanisms we are left unable to act morally, democracy breaks down and we are left with our best universities churning out hedge fund managers, are economy recording paper profits and our media, when it bothers, debating climate change. We are left with perverse inequality, a declining middle class and falling life expectancy. Instead of our society producing a sense of “people cooperating by voting to give each other greater prosperity,” we have, Haque wrote, one that takes “prosperity away from one another.” Though she does not frame her work in these terms, that health care is far from a moral universal in this country is documented at length in Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal’s recent, “An American Sickness, How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.” Dr. Rosenthal, K...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs