Is Economic Growth A Precondition of Health Care Reform?
Do economic conditions need to get worse in order to create a moral mandate for health care system reform and a shift towards universal health care coverage? A new book by Harvard economist, Benjamin Friedman suggests that, in fact, economic conditions need to get better in order to achieve progressive social programs such as investment in the expansion of health care coverage. Which creates the right environment – things getting better or things getting worse? According to Friedman, rapid, broad-based (across all incomes) economic growth has historically been associated with the growth of progressive social programs and regulations. This is not the case with slow economic growth – or the uneven growth that has characterized recent decades and most of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Since the 1970s, social programs have been curtailed, benefits cut, and regulations relaxed as the language of personal responsibility has become dominant. In the area of health care, system c
