This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor.—Dr Reinhardt's¹ recent attack on my book Mortal Peril² presents this challenge: "to the extent a nation's health system can make it possible, should the child of a poor American family have the same chance of avoiding preventable illness or of being cured from a given illness as does a child of a rich American family?" The correct answer is no.

The health of youngsters is intimately tied to their parental care and attention; nutrition, location, and even the family car determine in part who will become injured or ill. Reinhardt tolerates these inequalities because they lie outside the health care system. But a consistent egalitarian should redress all sources of inequality, including child care, education, and crime prevention. Yet, Reinhardt neither justifies his priorities nor explains how to fund a full-scale initiative without destroying the social wealth it needs for support. Self-interest is not a universal . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Wanted: A Clearly Articulated Social Ethic for American Health Care
Uwe E. Reinhardt
JAMA. 1997;278(17):1446-1447.
PDF  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Comparison of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Viral Loads in Kenyan Women, Men, and Infants during Primary and Early Infection
Richardson et al.
J. Virol. 2003;77:7120-7123.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT