This comment is in response to a January 19, 2022 NYT column by Ross Douthat, available online at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/opinion/lyme-disease-health-care.html#commentsContainer .

I was pleased with Mr. Douthat’s willingness to reflect and reconsider his previous stance on health care. For Mr. Douthat it required a personal experience with his own health crisis in order to open his eyes to the reality that access to health care is often reasonable and necessary even when it appears inefficient or profligate in nature. But if this has revealed to Mr. Douthat one weakness of the libertarian perspective, consider another — that personal experience alone opened his eyes to this reality for so many when real empathy would have done so much earlier. Perhaps, then, Mr. Douthat is revealing yet another weakness of the libertarian perspective — that it is truly a “me” perspective on the world while rarely considering the valid needs, interests, and experiences of others. One need not be a socialist to recognize social cohesion as a quintessentially American goal — succinctly put in our motto: E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. Let’s accept that the experiences of others are valid, even when they are not our own personal experiences, and that we should all strive to alleviate suffering even when we are not the ones experiencing the suffering.  Real empathy — in politics, policy, and political theorizing — would allow us to recognize the needs and interests of others so that we could move toward that promised more perfect union. And that, is a truly American objective.