The Healing of America by T. R. Reid — an important book to read

The Healing of America by T. R. Reid

Next Thursday, January 7, at noon at the Urban Engagement Book Club sponsored by Central Dallas Ministries, I will present a synopsis of the book The Healing of America:  A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid.  It provides great and comprehensive information about the health care issue, and if you have the time, I invite you to attend.  (Details here).  For me, it has been an important book to read.

Here are a few key quotes from the book:

Twenty two thousand Americans (USA) die each year from treatable diseases (because they do not have health care).

Does a wealthy country have an ethical obligation to provide access to health care for everybody?  Do we want to live in a society that lets tens of thousands of our neighbors die each year, and hundreds of thousands face financial ruin, because they can’t afford medical care when they’re sick?…  Every developed country except the United States has reached the same conclusion:  Everybody should have access to medical care.  Having made that decision, the other nations have organized health care systems to meet that fundamental moral goal…

At the start of the twenty-first century, the world’s riches and most powerful nation does not have the world’s best health care system.  But we could…  We can heal America’s ailing health care system – and the world’s other industrialized democracies can show us how to do it.

Whereas all other nations work from the time the line turns blue to introduce a healthy new person into their health care system, the United States first attends to its poorest mothers and newborns in the hospital on delivery day…  Until we adopt a health care system that encourages it, preventive health care sill remain largely inaccessible to far too many Americans.

(Though there is legitimate debate re. the health care rankings of countries, this is clear and not in dispute):  there is a coterie of developed countries that are providing quality health care, distributing it fairly and equitably – and doing all that for much less money than the United States is spending.

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