Word: reformative
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Americans seem willing to make this sacrifice, but just barely. About one half of Americans support health-care reform, even though only roughly one fifth of Americans predict a material gain from such support of a national system. According to a recent CBS poll, only 22 percent of Americans “said the reforms now being considered would help them personally,” while 30 percent even believed that “reforms would hurt them personally.” In the same poll, 53 percent favored “the government offering everyone a government administered health...
...public to join this slim majority. Since Americans now shy away from a hierarchy of moral preferences, even those who would maintain their current care based on selfishness cannot be condemned. If forsaking current comforts for others would not be obligatory under our contemporary moral decorum, appeals for medical reform would then lose nearly all their persuasive force. While objectors rightly note that inaction hurts the uninsured, precisely because the currently comfortable might intend no harm, this complaint proves relevant but non-essential. In our modern mindset, sacrifice for the sake of another is obviously an act above and beyond...
...offend and to avoid dogmatic statements that seem improvable. Even disapprobation toward a selfish man seems out of place. His hoarding might not be laudable, but each of us is hesitant to claim definite knowledge of his moral worth. In a widespread effort such as national medical reform, compassion requires conscience in order to work. On a solely pragmatic level, without appeal to a sense of duty, the mind of the dissident will remain unchanged...
Advocates of health-care change would do well to keep in mind America’s touchiness with the rhetoric of sacrifice. Our baseline moral assumptions frustrate the efforts of health-care reform advocates, who are in the uncommon and precarious position of asking U.S. citizens to sacrifice their autonomy for the greater good...
...skipping over the fundamental question of the rationale for reform, our legislators have taken the politically expedient route. And by ignoring Americans’ moral discomfort with issues of self-denial, reformers have allowed societal priorities to remain muddied. Providing moral clarity to the health-care debate would not have come without cost but would surely have offered direction to such an important national endeavor. Our marketplace of ideas might still be open to the discussion of all opinions, but a serious observer of today’s health-care debate could never guess...