What Kind of Health Care System Should the U. S. Adopt? Part I

    David Craig and Joan Tronto

    Part of the 2018 Spring series: Freedom, Community, and Health Care
    Thursday, April 19, 2018, 7:00 p.m.
    Tomson Hall 280

    As part of a spring series on Freedom, Community, and Health Care, David Craig and Joan Tronto will engage in a discussion on the complexities of our overall health care system and how we might construct a better one.

    Craig’s work, described in his most recent book, Health Care as a Social Good: Religious Values and the American Democracy, focuses on rising health costs and the need for health care reform in the United States. His extensive research involved traveling across the nation to assess health care and meeting with hospital administrators, caregivers, and interfaith activists from different political parties to understand the values they want U.S. health care to serve. Craig argues that health care is a shared social good and encourages a community-based health care system, one that is a shared responsibility of community engagement. His book has been called “a brilliant book that carefully analyzes the ethical foundation of conservative arguments for market reform and liberal arguments for individual rights in health care.”

    Tronto’s background is primarily in the area of care, and she believes by putting care after everything else — money, politics, health services, etc. ­— we are ruining our health care systems in the United States. Her book on the subject, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice, looks beyond the politics of health care and suggests the presence of a care deficit in our country — one that can only be improved with major societal reform.

    Audio from the event was featured on MPR News Presents.

    Can’t make it? Stream live or later.
    About the Speaker

    Speaker: David Craig

    David Craig

    David M. Craig is professor of religious studies and has served as the Thomas H. Lake Scholar in Religion and Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is the author of John Ruskin and the Ethics of Consumption (2006) and Health Care as a Social Good: Religious Values and American Democracy (2014).

    Speaker: David Craig

    Joan Tronto

    Joan C. Tronto is a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. She teaches in the Political Science and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department, and is a member of the affiliate faculty at the Center for Bioethics. She was previously a professor of women’s studies and political science at Hunter College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.

    Her recent books include Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (2013) and Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics (2015). Tronto earned her A.B. at Oberlin College, her M.A. at Princeton University, and her Ph.D. at Princeton University.