The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

One of the fundamental questions in The Healing of America is whether Americans regard health care as a fundamental right to which everyone should have access or as a commercial product that should only be available to those who can afford it. Due to the strong pro-business sentiment in American politics, and the financial influences of the insurance industry, pharmaceutical and healthcare product lobbyists, and the American Medical Association, the United States has avoided providing universal health care, thereby ensuring that every citizen—rich and poor—would have equal access to health care. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not offer universal health care, as well as the only wealthy nation that has made no effort to create a fairer health care system—that is, one in which everyone has access to necessary health services.

Reid illustrates how the public acts as its own worst enemy on the matter of universal health care, largely due to prejudice. When many Americans think of universal health care, they equate it with socialism and assume that these models will give them fewer health care options and longer wait times to get treatment. While it is true that Canada has been notorious for its queue, and the British NHS has refused treatment for some services to control costs, the countries that operate according to the Bismarck model—particularly France, Japan, and Germany—offer patients an array of services at affordable rates.