Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

by Joshua D. Greene

One can say that national health insurance will improve/destroy American healthcare, but if one is going to say this, and say it with confidence, one had better have some evidence. First, one had better understand how national health insurance is actually supposed to work (see above). Then, as a seeker of evidence, one must understand how different healthcare systems work and how different systems have fared in various states and nations: Who lives longest? Who has the best quality of life following care? Which citizens are most satisfied overall with their healthcare? These are, of course, just the sorts of questions that policy wonks try to answer, and not just about healthcare but about all significant social issues: When nations abolish the death penalty, do murder rates go up? Do nations that redistribute wealth more widely encourage laziness? Are the citizens of such nations less happy overall? Figuring out what makes societies happier is challenging and prone to bias. But in the end, with ten steps forward and nine steps back, such questions can be answered with evidence.