The current healthcare issue is reflective of the same basic problem that McKibben identifies in this chapter. People look at the cost and other factors of a "public option" for healthcare and get scared for themselves, positive that this would mean bureaucrats making medical decisions and scared about the costs when the fact is this is exactly what happens now -- we just don't call private executives in insurance companies bureaucrats, and for some reason it feels like we're paying less if it's directly out of our pockets and not in the form of taxes. The only real difference between public and private insurance would be the size of the pool, and the fact that there wouldn't need to be additional profits made on premiums. The benefit to joining together as a community is that there is a much larger cushion for everyone, but instead of seeing...

Public policy in general should be shifted more towards ensuring adequate standards of living and health for all Americans, and healthcare reform is an excellent place to start. As the wealthiest nation per capita that the world has ever seen, it is appalling that we have one some of the worst socioeconomic problems in the developed world. The lessons of democracy and capitalism were misinterpreted; individualism has its place, but that place is within a community.