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The Connection is an open conversation, a group blog, and a nonpartisan effort to spark a rich discourse on fundamental values in health reform. Anyone can submit a post, and a selection of posts will appear here, on the Health Affairs blog, and in an upcoming volume.
11.16.09
| From NPR Science Friday
Tom Murray, president of The Hastings Center, discussed how and why health reform should reflect our values in an interview on NPR’s Science Friday on November 6. “We wanted to start a conversation that takes a deeper look at values underlying health care and health reform,” he said. Murray made a case for universal participation—coverage for all, coupled with the responsibility of individuals to obtain it, andenabled by costs shared among individuals, employers, and government.
Click here for a full text transcript of the conversation.
Host Ira Flatow said in his introduction:
“Lost in the fray [of acronyms and actuarial tables] is the whole reason to have the health care debate in the first place…we’re going to try to reel it back in to talk about our values. What role do they play in shaping health care policy?”
Flatow noted that in its recent collection of essays, Connecting American Values with Health Reform, “The Hastings Center has tried to bring values back into the discussion.”
Len Nichols, health policy director at the New America Foundation, also participated in the show. Nichols, a health economist who wrote an essay on stewardship for the Hastings Center collection, said that passage of the final health care reform legislation is contingent on leadership that promotes shared values. “It is sometimes true is that those values seem to differ among political antagonists….but when you probe deeply and get in a dialogue you find out the values are actually shared,” Nichols said. “I believe most people share them and therefore we will end up with a bill that moves our country forward.”
value: Accountability, Efficiency, Fairness, Freedom, Health, Honesty, Integrity, Justice, Liberty, Medical Progress, Pragmatism, Privacy, Quality, Responsibility, Solidarity, Stewardship, Subsidiarity
Neil Bray
12.9.09
Speakers completely misrepresent positions of Jefferson, specifically stating that housing, education and now health care are rights of citizenship. They are not. The opportunity to access is your right, however, we are not responsible for the individual results. Speakers also barely scratched the surface in discussing each value and its impact on healthcare, specifically responsibility. I would love to see value driven approaches in healthcare, in fact, I thought candidate Obama promised me that such an approach would be followed in his analysis phase of healthcare reform. It seems that phase was bypassed. Entitlement and wealth redistribution are not values of this country, however, they are the cornerstone of our healtcare reform efforts.
Every citizen of this country should have access to quality healtcare. To perfect that access, each citizen has the responisbility to take preventive care of his health and contribute proportionately to the cost of providing care.