A Big Picture View of Health and Inequality
posted by Frank Pasquale
I’m afraid I missed the President’s speech last night, but I’ve found Andrew Sullivan’s reactions to it well worth reading . . . especially his litany of the chief problems we face as a country:
Here are my concerns: a moneyed elite whose estrangement from the center of American life, proved by their obscene indifference to minimal propriety . . . has destabilized the critical middle of American polity, and begun to feed a cynicism about government that is corrosive of democracy; a culture of debt that has pervaded public and private America that bespeaks deep contempt for future generations; a physical infrastructure that is in obvious disrepair; an empire that seems to be running on auto-pilot, which keeps adding new provinces, with no way to sustain them in the long run; a healthcare system that seems to have built up as much waste as innovation and as much bureaucracy as the worst form of socialized medicine; an energy policy that keeps us in hock to Arab dictators and abuses our responsibility to be careful stewards of God’s creation. (emphasis added)
I couldn’t have put it better myself. Obama’s plan to tax that “moneyed elite” in order to get some leverage on the health care leviathan seems an ideal first step toward tackling these problem, even if it does inevitably hit some of the more virtuous denizens of lower Richistan.
Hopefully administration leaders will get a chance to see the film version of Maggie Mahar’s Money-Driven Medicine. The book brilliantly chronicles the wasteful complexity of our current health care non-system. I am thrilled to see it adapted by a documentarist of Alex Gibney‘s stature (he directed “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side”). I’ll be hosting a screening at Yale in April.
February 25, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (3)
Hardy K Kalla - February 26, 2009 at 9:42 am
a moneyed elite whose estrangement from the center of American life, proved by their obscene indifference to minimal propriety . . . has destabilized the critical middle of American polity, and begun to feed a cynicism about government that is corrosive of democracy
Steve O - February 26, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Can someone please explain to me how we can say that the government will have a certain amount of income (via taxes) is going to be available for deficit spending when there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs.
I also want to know how this stimulus package will benefit 95% of all Americans. I don’t know what percentage the wealthy are, but they will surely not benefit. I know that those who are not working will not benefit from the stimulus as designed since it is being distributed by lower taxes on your wages. What happens to those of us who do not have jobs. How do we benefit? I have been out of work for over a year. I can’t benefit from lower taxes when I have nothing to pay taxes on and very limited opportunity to find work in this little town. Its not like there is any money to move to a larger town. I don’t even have money to buy gas for the car.
Get White Teeth - January 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm
I think both partners take their views on Health Care too far. What’s need is a plan that everyone gets health care plus have the option to pay for it yourself. Those paying would get an extra tax relief during income time.
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