Connecting Values With American Health Care Reform

Principal Investigators: Mary Crowley, Gregory Kaebnick, and Thomas Murray

Funder: Adelson Family Foundation, Cranaleith Foundation

When the Obama administration announced its intention to reform the American health care system, The Hastings Center launched a public affairs effort to focus on the values that Americans hold dear in health care. The aim was to get beyond the nuts and bolts of the various reform plans and examine the fundamental and sometimes competing values that underlie any significant social change—and to inject these values into the public debate, with a robust outreach strategy.

The project enlisted a dozen or so prominent writers and thinkers, each of whom considered a particular value, such as liberty, choice, solidarity, physician integrity, fairness, and affordability. Their essays were published in Connecting American Values With Health Reform.