Globe Op-Ed reads my mind

This fabulous op-ed in Tuesday's Boston Globe demands that the incoming Obaministration reject the American obsession with "individual lifestyle" and the "biomedical miracle" and commit to creating health-promoting social policies, encompassing all areas of policy including taxation, housing, transportation, food, etc.

The crux of the argument is the need to change the true causes of disparities in health, or what the "scientists" and "experts" often gloss over as inevitable, in their race to find the latest breakthrough, as stated eloquently in an important recent WHO report on social determinants of health:

"The unequal distribution of health-damaging experiences is not in any sense a 'natural' phenomenon but the result of a toxic combination of poor social policies and programs, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics."

And finally, the author makes APHA Executive Director Dr. Georges Benjamin my new hero, by quoting his speech from last month's annual conference in San Diego (which I missed):

"I would love Barack Obama to declare that he wants America to be the healthiest nation in the world - in a generation. Americans need to rally around the idea of grappling not only with healthcare, but with health."

Yes! We can! Not only can we...we must! This is the argument that I've been trying to make to anyone who would listen for the past several years-- and is at the heart of my frustration with the field of "health policy," which simultaneously admits that there are social determinants which have far greater strength at predicting heath outcomes than does access to (or quality of, for that matter) health care, but yet continues to focus 95% of its attention on "healthCARE policy" to the exclusion of policies about HEALTH.

But of course that would "upset the apple-cart," as my professor likes to say, especially right here in Boston, the medical capital of the USA. The question on every good progressive's mind is:
Is He [godly emphasis mine] willing to do that?