. Seven weeks after the government rescued the depositors of Silicon Valley Bank, it swept in to keep First Republic Bank from freefall early on the morning of May 1, brokering a sale to JPMorgan Chase while absorbing most of its losses. It’s what we expect the government to do: step in to reassure the public that the nation’s political and economic might are there to prevent outsized risk from turning into wider catastrophe.
I have worked on or written about U.S. health policy for a quarter of a century now, and whenever I point out that Americans should enjoy the right to state-guaranteed absorption of ruinous medical costs, I can count on some version of the following response: “Indeed we should, but it is just not politically realistic to expect the government to guarantee a claim to economic resources, when the U.S. has only ever viewed rights as freedom from the heavy hand of the state.