Getting Back to Basics on Health Care Reform

I just finished reading an old (2005) piece by Malcolm Gladwell on health insurance. While a few of the statistics are no longer current, the policy perspective is perfectly fresh and very useful in the current health care reform conversation.

In particular, I was touched by the clarity of the final paragraph of the article:

The issue about what to do with the health-care system is sometimes presented as a technical argument about the merits of one kind of coverage over another or as an ideological argument about socialized versus private medicine. It is, instead, about a few very simple questions. Do you think that this kind of redistribution of risk is a good idea? Do you think that people whose genes predispose them to depression or cancer, or whose poverty complicates asthma or diabetes, or who get hit by a drunk driver, or who have to keep their mouths closed because their teeth are rotting ought to bear a greater share of the costs of their health care than those of us who are lucky enough to escape such misfortunes? In the rest of the industrialized world, it is assumed that the more equally and widely the burdens of illness are shared, the better off the population as a whole is likely to be.

Find the Gladwell piece HERE (and thanks to Morgan for recommending it).