CALL TO ACTION
Social workers are ideally positioned, because of a strong ethical and political history, as well as affinity with disadvantaged clients, to play a role in the current health policy discourse. This discourse will decide which policy fork in the road the United States will take: toward more market competition and consumer responsibility, or toward a partnership of public and private sectors to guarantee certain basic protections for all citizens. These protections would include access to preventive health care and universal protection against catastrophic fmancial
losses due to extraordinary health care needs. As health care reform is identified by President Obama as one of three critical policy agendas (along with education and the environment), social work must not be left behind in the current effort to have authentically universal health care proposals placed on the table. Advocates for reforms based on personal
responsibility in the form of consumer-driven health care are currently facing off against those who propose partnerships that blend public and private insurance markets and involve a central organizational role for government.