Witness, for example, the birth of the National Health Service, which arose in Britain during an unusually cohesive, egalitarian environment that followed the Second World War. Conversely, societies that tolerate a high degree of inequality, such as the United States, also have enormous difficulty in forging a consensus about providing such communal benefits as health care. Not rendered a valuable service by reminding us that access to health care is not the major determinant of health inequalities. In other words, a society interested in reducing health inequalities is unlikely to achieve it by focusing on the provision of health care alone. We would agree with the view that adding poor health to the list of outcomes associated with income maldistribution is unlikely to spark a revolution, or to make Americans care more about trends in income distribution.
Health is too important to be left to the doctors alone.
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