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.

Assume, for the moment, that you support the adoption of universal, single-payer coverage in the United States. Let us say that you believe that everyone has a right to a decent and equitable minimum of health care, and that we as a society have a moral duty to ensure that everyone has financial and other access to such services. Under these circumstances, to what extent, if at all, can you reasonably support the current major congressional efforts to reform health coverage, and at what point if at all – and why – ought one to withdraw support?

So often the political debate in America revolves around two seemingly conflicting values: solidarity and subsidiarity. William Sage touched on the former. Opponents of health care reform often talk about the latter. But it is the intersection of these two values that matters most to American politics, and nowhere more so than in the health care debate…

While many speak of healthcare as an individual “right,” I prefer to think of universal coverage as something that we, as a civilized nation, desire for all members of our society because we recognize each other as equally human, vulnerable, and in need of care.

As a society, we have a moral obligation to provide access to medical care for all of our citizens. When we frame healthcare as a “right,” we shift responsibility from society to the individual. It is up to him to demand his due. At that point, the word “entitlement” comes to mind, along with the conservative image (so artfully drawn by President Reagan), of an aggrieved, resentful mob of freeloaders dunning the rest of us for having the simple good luck of being relatively healthy and relatively wealthy…

Illness, we are often told, is a private matter. Accordingly, none must interfere in the medical decisions that emerge from the confidential relationship between physician and patient. Yet evidence of interdependence is ubiquitous in health care. One person’s malady can harm families, workplaces, clubs, churches, and sometimes entire communities. Similarly, a suffering patient must rely on many individuals, associational groups, corporate entities, and government agencies for support and assistance. It is, therefore, unsurprising that various social units claim an interest and a voice in maintaining health and treating disease…