Health Care for All: A Moral Obligation

[dtotire]

Health Care for All: A Moral Obligation



Mr. Ponnuru’s argument against universal health insurance coverage oversimplifies the moral issue involved. Having health insurance in our modern economy is not just desirable but absolutely essential, as matters of both individual survival and collective well-being.

It is morally perverse to favor a system where a bad diagnosis can be a financial death sentence. Given that risks of being uninsured are shared with family members and costs of treating uninsured patients are foisted on society, it is ethically myopic to frame a decision to be uninsured as an acceptable choice “in a free country.” And Mr. Ponnuru overlooks the financial bloat of administrative costs in our market-based insurance system compared with single-payer alternatives that would finance universal coverage.

Health insurance in a civilized society is a collective moral obligation, not a discretionary consumer good. It’s somewhat analogous to national defense: We strive to safeguard everyone from the unpredictable consequences of an unforeseen tragedy, not just those who can find room in their household budgets to pony up for defense spending.

Bruce Barry
Nashville, April 9, 2009

The writer is a professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt University.





http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/opinion/l15health.html?ref=opinion

[sandnsea]

1. Defense is to protect business interests

The only thing the common citizen has to do with defense is to be duped into dying for the patriotic notion of it.

When we figure out that we need to frame health care as a business interest, then we'll all get health care.