In this article from Too Much, Institute for Policy Studies, they argue that healthcare is also about poverty. I think the missing narrative is that healthcare is a basic part of economics and is not the end all or be all but is an important part of the equation that helps to alleviate poverty and is a necesary corollary to a good standard of living.
That commission’s end product — Fair Society, Healthy Lives, or, as better known, the “Marmot Review” — last week went public, with hundreds of pages full of charts and graphs, a veritable epidemiological treasure chest. Amid all the data, a simple message: We can prevent health inequalities.
But to do that preventing we need to understand why we have these inequalities in the first place. And today we don’t.
We typically blame poor health on unhealthy behaviors. Or bad genes. Or a lack of access to health care. None of these factors, as important as they may be, turn out to statistically explain why some among us live lives so much longer and healthier than others. What does?
Says the Marmot Review: “Social and economic differences in health status reflect, and are caused by, social and economic inequalities in society.”
If we truly want to tackle health inequalities, advises the Marmot commission, we need to address “inequalities in the conditions of daily life and the fundamental drivers that give rise to them: inequities in power, money, and resources.”
Societies that have done a better job narrowing these inequities than Britain — or the United States — have people who live longer and healthier lives.
The new Marmot Review comes complete with recommendations for countering inequalities in everything from early childhood development to “the freedom to participate equally in the benefits of society.”
Behind all these recommendations sits an optimistic vision — and a warning. The vision: Our current economic crisis offers us an opportunity “to do things differently.” The warning: If we don’t do things differently, if we simply endeavor to restore the economic growth we had pre-meltdown, we doom millions to an ill-health they should not suffer.
“Economic growth without reducing relative inequality will not reduce health inequalities,” the Marmot commission cautions. “The economic growth of the last 30 years has not narrowed income inequalities.”
Archein