A Road-to-Damascus sort of thing?
I’m used to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s intelligent, impassioned attacks on American private health insurance, like this one, from 2005, and this one, from 2006.
“A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy—a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper—has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers.”
So I’m not sure what to make of this one, from 2000, in which he’s just as enthusiastic, but his position seems to be exactly reversed.
“I don’t think that the case against the American health-care system stands or falls on the treatment of some women who happen not to have adequate insurance for their highly premature babies. And I would also point out that if we examine closely the history of care for premature babies that all of it came from America. This is a classic condition for which the American health-care system pioneers treatment.”
I wonder what on earth happened in the intervening years to change his mind so dramatically?