Final day in Philadelphia was a great capper to the week. Thanks to Natalie from the Eisenhower Fellowships staff, I met this morning with Peter Gonzales from Welcome Pennsylvania, which has done great work in connecting work-authorized immigrants with jobs. This has obviously helped the immigrants, but it has also boosted the PA economy, creating shared prosperity.
The rest of the morning was spent in the "fishbowl," listening and commenting on the Fellows' project plans, and getting feedback from them about my own project. It was honest and informative and enlightening.
At lunch I had a dialogue with another Fellow whose project also centers on healthcare. He reminded me that our current epiphany about healthcare as being fundamental to the social contract is really a return to the roots of the emergence of civil society, where we first moved away from seeing the person only in terms of what he/she could contribute to the survival of the group and began to recognize the intrinsic value of a human life.
From this point of view, perhaps there could be an alignment between the interests of those who describe themselves as pro-life and those who are often at odds with this group but who adhere to humanistic principles. In this case, both sets of people might make common cause and use their combined clout to pressure politicians and healthcare providers and payors to reconceptualize healthcare as a right. This doesn't mean that we need to abandon market-based mechanisms or turn healthcare totally over to government. But the first step to any real changes in the healthcare space is a change of mindset, from thinking that healthcare is for those who can afford it and/or "deserve" it, to believing that basic care is something we guarantee to all by the very fact that they are a human being.
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