Pollsters, pundits and politicians tell us that health system reform is making a political comeback,  If our leaders finally resolve third-rail issues like cost and coverage, it will be the most significant step forward for health care – and health care justice – in America in 40 years.

Without question, our health system is needlessly fractured and flawed, locked in a broken status quo by major public and private players who have lacked the will to attack the problem’s core:  That health care in this great country is unjust and unfair.

Why else would we experience huge disparities in care and outcomes between whites and non-whites; or measure rising rates of infant mortality in the Deep South; or think it’s OK that nearly 45 million are uninsured, including 9 million children?  

We’ve allowed the appalling to become the acceptable because we haven’t taken the time to connect the dots between the uninsured, the quality of care and the economics of health care.

Let’s start with some basic precepts.   

First – Health care is a human right. This is not negotiable.  

Second – Guaranteeing everyone access to affordable quality care is a moral and economic imperative.

Third – The cost of coverage is an obligation shared by the three guarantors of the great social contract that binds of all us together.

These guarantors are:

• The individual.  That’s each of us. 
  
  
• Our government – of, for and by the people.  Not the politicians, not the special interests, but all of us working together for our common good. 

• The private sector.  Securing social value is as necessary as securing shareholder value.

The only way to connect the dots of coverage, quality and economy is to keep this social contract and its three guarantors in equilibrium.  But they haven’t been in harmony for a long time.

Can we overcome such deeply entrenched injustice? 

The President said, “Of all our national resources, none is of more basic value than the health our people.”  He proposed “to provide adequate medical care to all who need it, not as charity but on the basis of payments made by the beneficiaries of the program.”

That’s what the President said, all right.  But it wasn’t President Bush or even President Clinton.  No, that was President Truman in 1947 when he asked Congress to approve universal health care coverage.

Sixty years and we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, we’ve conquered polio and small pox, unlocked mysteries of the human genome, increased life expectancy from 68 to 78 years, landed men on the moon and beamed video back from Mars. 

It occurs to me that if health care were rocket science we wouldn’t be in this mess. 

We’ll have health justice in America when we close the gaps between the haves and have-nots, cover the uninsured, deliver health care that’s color blind and improve the quality of care so everyone receives what America’s long promised – the very best health care in the world.