A friend e-mailed me a link yesterday to a New York Times article. The incoming message showed only the title of the piece -- Country Without A Net. As I opened it, I was expecting an item about our failure in the United States to provide the fundamental elements of a social safety net (like universal health care).
I was very surprised when it turned out to be about Haiti! It's a well-written piece by Tracy Kidder, which makes some very valid points about weaknesses in the global network of international disaster relief, so I recommend that you read it.
Back to my mistake, though: It was a natural one to make.
Haiti is very much a country without a net; even before this week's disastrous earthquake, it was a country that had suffered too much from a whole host of problems ranging from poverty to bad governance. And yes, as social safety nets go, Americans are far better off than Haitians. For some Americans, evidently -- those who seek to block efforts to make health insurance and affordable care available to all -- that's sufficient. Those are the same people who take it on faith that U.S. health care is "the best in the world" despite much evidence to the contrary.
But it's those same people who should let the scales fall from their eyes. Haiti should not be our standard of comparison. Among the developed nations with which we more commonly compare ourselves on various measures, we are Haiti.
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