Uwe Reinhardt responds to Joel Segal’s comments on the moral outrage of our failure to enact a program of universal health care (which was in response to Reinhardt’s editorial):
I could not agree more. If the nation’s czar of morality Bill Bennett cared about such matters, he’d write another book entitled: Where’s the Outrage?
Alas, we live in America, and I merely reported in the editorial–and in the paper I reference therein–what I have learned about America in these past 35 years.
As I recently put it before a high level health-policy meeting in Washington, D.C.:
“One major source of our national economic strength –that is to say, our average GDP-per-capita-prowess–is a by international standards unusually high tolerance for misery among the nation’s economic losers, to wit:
1. people who made imprudent decisions somewhere along the way;
2. people who lack the intellectual acumen, or the education, or the training to fend for themselves in this highly demanding market economy;
3. people who are victims simply of pure bad luck (e.g., because they got sick, or wounded in combat, or hit by some accident, or were born into a household that was not supportive enough in the accumulation of human capital, etc).
For folks not falling into these three categories, this can be (and usually is) a truly fantastic country. Alas, for the folks who fall into these dire categories, it is a harsh, cruel and, in my own judgment, unjust country–whether we look at health care, education of our so-called ‘justice’ system.”
That is what I have learned about America in these past 35 years. I have come to accept it, as my editorial and my paper suggests.
Best,
Uwe