National Health Care Reform An Aura of Inevitability Is Upon Us

"With malice toward none; with charity for all...." So spoke Abraham Lincoln in his second Inaugural Address, recognizing that he had no political consensus regarding either the constitutionality of states' seceding or the morality of slavery's being abolished. Nonetheless, he knew what was right and was able, through persuasive, often inspiring rhetoric, to conclude a bloody and divisive civil war and constitute the foundation for this great democracy. Yet, access to basic medical care for all of our inhabitants is still not a reality in this country. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is long-standing, systematic, institutionalized racial discrimination. The major studies of health care maldistribution reinforce this statement with hard data, especially with regard to blacks and Hispanics.1,2It is not a coincidence that the United States of America and the Republic of South Africa—the only two developed, industrialized countries that do not