Of course special interests and those who follow Herbert Spencer's Survival of the fittest are going to do all they can say to convince the American public that Single Payer system goes against American Values.
Yesterday the New England Journal of Medicine publish an opinion piece by Allan S. Brett, M.D. asking What Are American Values, when it comes to Health Care.
The full text can be found here “American Values†— A Smoke Screen in the Debate on Health Care Reform He sums up his argument very well in the last paragraph.
Quote:
Policymakers debating health care reform should stop hiding behind the smoke screen of “American values.†Discussions dominated by references to uniquely American individualism, uniquely American solutions, or narrowly defined conceptions of choice tell us more about the political and economic interests of the discussants than about the interests of the Americans they claim to represent. In an increasingly diverse country that has a widening gap between rich and poor, a more promising approach is to start with the questions that matter to everyone: Will the system care for us when we’re sick and help prevent illness when we’re well? Will we have access to medical care throughout our lives without risking financial ruin? Will we be able to navigate the system easily, without jumping through unnecessary hoops or encountering excessive red tape? Will health care spending be managed wisely? Health care reformers owe Americans a system that best addresses these questions — not one that merely pays lip service to ill-defined “American values.â€
No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
Still the Republican Party is holding on to Spenser's idea as gospel and can't admit to all the harm this ideas have created in the last century.
If you are interested in more about Spenser I suggest reading Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America I started reading it while in the hospital and about half way through. It's given me some better insight into how the Republican Party went from the Party of Abe Lincoln to the party of Rush Limbaugh.