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If health care doesn’t automatically translate into healthier societies, the obvious question becomes, then what does? Equality. People who live in more equal societies, epidemiologists have documented, live longer and healthier lives than people who live in more unequal societies.
But here’s the encouraging news: The just-passed health care reform package includes provisions that will help make the United States more equal. Some of these provisions are starting to receive considerable press attention. The health care reform package overall, New York Times analyst David Leonhardt noted last week, just may represent “the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.”