The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less

But some Americans have been pressing their countrymen to deal with that “first question” as a foundation for building a new national health care system. Professor Uwe Reinhardt, the economist at Princeton University and global leader in the field of health care economics, argues that U.S. policy makers have deliberately avoided the moral question.

a new social ‘contract for care’ that sets out the mutual roles and responsibilities of individuals, families, communities and the state (national and local), based on the simple truth that most of us will give and receive support at some point in our lives;

the purpose and benefits of good social care have become disconnected and sidelined by a sole fixation on the hard choices about how and by whom social care is paid for.

A cardiologist, endocrinologist, obesity specialist, health economist and social epidemiologists all said versions of the same thing: Striving to get ahead in an unequal society contributes to people in the United States aging quicker, becoming sicker and dying younger.