Adam Smith Turns Over

Uwe Reinhardt eloquence:

[O]n 10 July 2007, President Bush casually shrugged off the plight of the uninsured with the remark, “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room”—with nary a concern expressed over how these emergency rooms will cover their costs.

Absolutely without intending to do so, the efforts of US healthcare providers to cater to uninsured people have aided and abetted great irresponsibility among the nation’s political leaders, thereby perpetuating the plight of the uninsured. This is so because the benevolence of health professionals has provided political leaders with moral coverage for resisting any and all efforts to move the nation at long last to fully universal health insurance. By their benevolent ingenuity healthcare professionals in the US have, albeit unwittingly, allowed politicians to go to church or synagogue and feel right with God, just after voting down the latest proposal for universal coverage.