Liberty and Justice For All

Michael-

Thanks for this post. I agree with you, that somehow the "American Dream" is too often ,as Michael Moore said "All about me, and not about we."

 If we are to create a reliable health safety net in this country, we will need to do two things.

First, create a new vision, affirming health care as a right, indispensible to reaching one's full human potental and essential to achieving the nation's overall productvity goals and  competing on a global scale.

Seond, think broad and integrated. In 2004,Stephen Issas and Steve Schroder,writing on race and class and health in America said in the NEJM, "Race and class are both independently associated with health status, although it is often difficult to disentangle the individual effects of the two factors."(http://healthpolitics.org/program_transcript.asp?p=class_race_health). Why so difficult? Because we've sequestered health in it's own sector and barrcaded it behind power silos.

It's not enough to reform our health care systm, or even simply extend insurance, we need a fundamentally change our philosophy. We need to go back to our Founding Fathers original dream and ask, "What must society do to insure liberty and justice for all?"

Mike