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Personal Responsibility, Healthcare Reform, And Going With Our Guts

This post appears on the Hastings Center’s Values and Health Reform Connection, a new group blog on American values and why they matter in health reform.

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Values come from the gut, not the mind, and the gut is not a sophisticated thinker about the nuances of alternative policy options.

—Jim Sabin, MD Essay: Responsibility

I’m going to do something “radical” here in the spirit of Dr. Sabin’s opening quote – and speak from my gut on the topic of responsibility.

In my opinion, it’s human nature to shirk responsibility, and our current society is a great facilitator of that natural urge. The more wealthy and technologically comfortable we become, the fewer responsibilities we have (in terms of securing basic needs), and the more empowered we are to indulge our inner narcissism. Until we accept that we all have this selfish tendency, we’ll continue to point at others and engage in a blame game that keeps us all very much in the dark about what’s really going on. Read more »

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