Healthy, Wealthy and Fair

Extract

Healthy, Wealthy and Fair. Edited by James Morone and Lawrence Jacobs. New York: Oxford University Press, 382p. $29.95.

The result of the United States system for providing health insurance and care is that some citizens receive an abundance of high-quality care while others receive care that is poor, hard to come by, or both. This state of affairs does not fairly reflect public opinion; when surveyed, the majority of citizens express support for the idea that access to care is a right of citizenship. In a nation in which public policies relate strongly to public opinions, the failure to solve the health insurance problem is puzzling. Some analysts describe the health policy problem as economic: Health insurance products, the nature of health care as a good, and the hegemonic roles of providers and payers combine to produce the distribution of health benefits that now exists. The editors and contributors in this volume reject that view and describe health inequality as a political problem solvable with political solutions.