Tag Archive for redistribution of wealth
MLK, health care reform and wealth inequality
Martin Luther King, Jr. (National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights; Chicago, IL; March 25, 1966):
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
In light of that, and in conjunction with more recent studies on how it is those with the most equality that are the happiest and healthiest, it is encouraging to read an article like this: “In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality.”
The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
The bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.
The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s).
Is redistribution of wealth good for your health?
Reframing GOOD Magazine’s article, “Inequality Makes Me Sick (Literally),” this interview with epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson is particularly interesting. Of particular note is his observation that it’s not those who have the most or the highest incomes who tend to be the happiest and healthiest, but those who have the most equality (or least inequality):
…we looked at life expectancy, mental illness, teen birthrates, violence, the percent of populations in prison, and drug use. They were all not just a little bit worse, but much worse, in more unequal countries. … Epidemiologists and people working in public health have been doing this work for some time, not only controlling for relative poverty, but for all the income levels within, for instance, an American state. So once you know the relationship between income and death rates, for example, you should be able to predict what a state’s death rate will be. Actually, though, that doesn’t produce a good prediction; what matters aren’t the incomes themselves but how unequal they are. If you’re a more unequal state, the same level of income produces a higher death rate.
Now, of course, my title for this blog is a little facetious–I’m not under any illusions that government intervention is the only way to deal with inequality. But the fact remains that it’s not how much we have that determines our health but what we do with what we have–and I would say, how we help and empower others with what we have–that determines our health. And our character.
