By Wendy Parmet
This new post by Wendy Parmet appears on the Health Affairs Blog in a series stemming from the Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Monday, January 23, 2017.
In May 2016, President Barack Obama observed that Flint, Michigan’s water crisis arose from a “culture of neglect” and the belief “that less government is the highest good no matter what.” The crisis, which developed after the city’s unelected emergency manager switched the water supply from the Detroit Water System to the highly corrosive Flint River, caused dangerously high blood lead levels in many of the city’s children, as well as an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. Property values plummeted and the state and federal governments were forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to mitigate the problem.
Now as a new President who has promised to improve the nation’s infrastructure settles into office, the question remains: Will the culture of neglect, especially regarding the health of poor people of color, continue? The answer may depend upon whether the law recognizes the protection of public health as not only a source of governmental power, but also as a duty for which officials may be held responsible. […]
Read the full post here.