Health Care is a Moral Issue | Big Think

Health Care is a Moral Issue

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If Obama wins this battle, he’d be up there with F.D.R. and L.B.J. in terms of solidifying the 21st century American welfare state, says Brown economics professor Glenn Loury.

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Glenn Loury:

Glenn Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He is one of the nation's foremost black intellectuals, having held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Boston University.

Loury's sometimes controversial dissection of racial disparities, systemic racism, and economic justice have often landed his views at the center of attention. Early in his professorial career, Loury made his mark as a distinguished academic economist with specific focus on the fields of welfare economics, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of income distribution. Once earmarked as the leading candidate for the position of under secretary of education in the Reagan administration before withdrawing his name from consideration, Loury also gained notoriety as a controversial social critic with right-wing perspectives that led to his designation as "one of the black darlings of the neoconservative intelligentsia" by Africana.com.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Loury became known for his abrasive critique of affirmative action and his propensity to blame racial inequality on the dysfunction and corruption within the black community, as opposed to the racist attitudes that some argued gave rise to this scenario.

In the late 1990s, however, Loury divulged a much-publicized split with the right, revising former viewpoints and attacking former colleagues. This break was formally ushered in with the release of his new book, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, in February of 2002.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How important is it that Obama wins on healthcare?

Glenn Loury: The president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, elected comfortably, in his first year with a very ambitious agenda, inheriting a economic crisis, passing massive fiscal legislation in this stimulus package, which has huge implications down the road; budgetary, tax wise, and so forth and so on; and having at the top of his agenda, reforming healthcare, needs to win this one.

He wins this one, he gets this done, he is a long way toward a successful first term.

He's a long way toward minimizing whatever setbacks the Democrats might have in the 2010 mid-term elections.

And he's up there with LBJ and FDR in terms of solidifying the 20th, 21st, century American Welfare State. This is major. Healthcare is major.

So the politics of this, as the right-wing understands very, very well, is tremendously profound.

I see the policy issues, I see the politics, but I also see the moral issue. Because this really is about who we are as a people here. And this healthcare debate--now everybody knows the history; Clintons' tried; they failed early in their administration. And they suffered serious setbacks in the '94 elections and the rest is history. Obama is teetering here. He tries, he fails; then we've got two failures, right, to try to do this.

And the fact that we are the only advanced industrial democracy where people can get sick and languish because they can't afford care. Or where people are blocked in access to the system because they don't have access to insurance, which is only available through certain narrow portals and under certain very restricted conditions. The fact that we're the only society that hasn't embraced this idea, that no one should go without access to these services, regardless of their financial condition, and no one should be saddled with a lifetime of debt because they have the misfortune of falling ill; that's a major moral issue.

So I see it as a moment of big moral challenge for the country. Those are the broad outlines that I see.

Question: What do you think of the administration’s plan?

Glenn Loury: I want the president to succeed here and I want the country to move in this direction. There's a lot to pick over and argue about on the policy front.

I get the public option, because it's the stalking horse -- I know I'm not supposed to say this, I know that this is not the line -- it's the camel's nose under the tent for what I think is the correct solution to this problem, which is the so-called single payer system.

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