Author Description

The debates over the issues of health care reform and funding for AIDS research and treatment have thus far raged separately. There has been little discussion of whether health care reform would improve the lives of HIV patients, largely, many would say, because so many of those affected by HIV belong to groups that are traditionally discriminated against--gays, drug abusers, members of minority groups, and a rapidly growing number of women and children--tempting policymakers and the public alike to think in terms of "us" and "them."To continue to yield to this temptation would be a grave mistake, Norman Daniels argues in his new book Seeking Fair Treatment: From the AIDS Epidemic to National Health Care Reform. Expertly guiding readers through the complex maze of conflicting claims made by insurers, activists, and the medical community, he shows that AIDS activists' long fight for better treatment and access to care is not the fight of a desparate and isolated group, but a fight for exactly the things all of us need in our national health care system. Daniels maintains that since the early 1980s, HIV and AIDS patients have served as "canaries in the coalmine," exposing weaknesses in the health care system that affect many health care consumers, including cancer patients, the elderly, and those with a pre-existing or chronic condition. For example, HIV patients have frequently lost their health insurance coverage just when they needed it most, but so too have far too many cancer patients. HIV patients are increasingly locked in to jobs because they fear losing insurance if they change employment; so too are diabetics. With precision and insight, Daniels probes the issues of justice that underlie central controversies about how we should treat each other in the HIV epidemic, controversies that are intrinsically linked to the problems of designing a better national health care system. These include the duty of physicians to treat HIV patients; the conflicting rights of patients and infected health care workers; the insurability of those at high risk; the rights of patients to unproven drugs; the rationing of expensive treatments; and educating students about "safe sex" practices in our public schools.Seeking Fair Treatment makes a major contribution to the health care debate. Arguing passionately that access to health care is not merely a goal for a just society, it is a requirement, Norman Daniels provides an equitable and efficient framework for coming to terms with one of the great moral crises of our time.