In this episode of Michigan Minds, Pamela Herd, social policy professor at the University of Michigan, discusses issues of healthcare access and affordability in light of the slaying of an industry CEO, efforts of a university lab in boosting access and breaking down walls to social safety net programs, and finding common ground within a polarized electorate.

Here's an excerpt of the conversation:

The killing of a healthcare CEO on a Manhattan sidewalk has become, in the words of Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, "a stunning moment of clarity about the state of American society." I'd like to ask you what Will asked his readers: Why did it take an assassination to raise an issue that was ignored in a presidential campaign?

So let me preface this by saying that vigilante justice, which is one way to think about what happened, is never OK. The killing, the murder, assassination of the United Healthcare executive was not OK.

That said, people's reactions to it and the kind of depth of the anger that we heard from people in response is I think a pretty strong signal that something is fundamentally broken in how we deliver healthcare in the United States. And that's what it really tapped into: People are incredibly frustrated in the U.S. healthcare system. We spend enormous amounts of money paying for healthcare, both individually out of pocket as well as aggregately in terms of the federal and state budgets. And people just feel like they're not getting their money's worth. 

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