Article: What counts as basic health care? Private values and public policy. (Public & Private: Redrawing Boundaries)

A firm consensus has dominated the American republic's ethos: religious and personal values belong to the realm of the private, separate from matters of public policy. The coming health care debate is about to challenge that separation.

Basic health care is on the verge of being recognized as a right for Americans as it has been for most of the modern world. As long as "good health care" was believed to be a matter of fact, there was no conceptual problem for the separation of the public and the private. Medicine was thought to be objective, a matter appropriate for public policy. A national board, with the assistance of objective outcomes research, could determine what ...

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