The Case for Universal Healthcare

TIMOTHY SNYDER, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, YALE UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR, “OUR MALADY: LESSONS IN LIBERTY FROM A HOSPITAL DIARY”: Well, when I was so sick that I couldn’t move, I had lots of time to think. There were days where I couldn’t do much else but think and watch what was going on around me. What was happening to me was that thanks to a series of medical mistakes, a condition which should have been treated, as you were kind enough to say, almost killed me. What was happening around me taught me that the things that looked to me at first like mistakes or like coincidences or like bad luck were actually part of a larger system, that I was getting, you know, as a very privileged person most of the time, a look into a system which is fundamentally based upon profit and based upon inequality. So, what I tried to do was take notes of the things that were happening to me, things I saw happening to other people, and make a diagnosis. And the diagnosis basically is this, that we have a notion of freedom which is just too narrow, which is just too thin. If we don’t think about our bodies when we talk about freedom, then other people are going to think about our bodies as a way to make profit. And before we know it, the thing which we need to be free people fundamentally, our health, is bought and sold. So, that’s the basic idea.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Before I get into some more of that, I want to just ask you, you know, this happened to you at the end of last year, 2019. Are you fully recovered? How do you feel?

SNYDER: Well, that’s very kind of you to ask. I’m not fully recovered, but I feel very good all the same. It sounds a little bit silly to say it, but I’m happy to be alive. I appreciate sounds and smells and tastes and all these other things which I was taking for granted for a long time. I’m feeling really well, thank you.

AMANPOUR: I mean, you know, you saw a health care system, and let’s just, you know, list some of the issues, where life expectancy is falling, infant and maternal mortality is high, profits are valued more than outcomes, you say. I guess I want to understand, and American people will want to understand, and the people around the world, when you say that without access to proper health care, you could not expect to have a proper democracy, a proper set of freedoms. Put those two together. Why not and how would it be rectified?

SNYDER: I think that’s a really essential question for we Americans, and it’s something that Americans take for granted and that puzzles the rest of the world. We take for granted that health and health care is somehow a matter for the left, and that liberty, freedom, that language is somehow a matter for the right, and we let them get separated.