Is The Coronavirus A Real Life Heinz Dilemma?

In the 1950’s Lawrence Kolhburg, a professor at Harvard developed a theory of how children develop their moral reasoning. His research consisted of telling children and adults a series of short stories and following up with a series of questions. One of those stories is the Heinz Dilemma and if goes like this:

A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. 

The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's laboratory to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not? If you were the judge, how would you rule? The Heinz Dilemma is a classical story used in classrooms to discuss ethics. I have often used it myself.

I am suggesting that the United States is facing a Heinz Dilemma of its own. We are being threatened by a new virus, the Coronavirus. Questions are rising about how much a vaccine will cost and who will be eligible to get this vaccine assuming one is developed. We know the one percent will have no problem with accessibility. But for most people accessibility is an open question.

Since our healthcare system is corrupted by a private for-profit system that emphasizes profit and efficiency over all other considerations it seems inevitable that almost everyone else will have limited if any accessibility of this vaccine. 

Since corporations have a goal of cutting costs and pleasing stockholders at the expense of treating patients this vaccine will be only accessible to those who can afford to pay for it. The one percent will probably hide in their gated communities and leave everyone else to fend for ourselves.

Unfortunately, all the gated communities in the world cannot stop the virus. Even the one percent will get infected eventually. Even those who can afford the cost of this vaccine will be infected by those who can’t.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Masque of the Red Death, “Prince Prospero attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquerade ball within seven rooms of the abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. Prospero dies after confronting this stranger, whose "costume" proves to contain nothing tangible inside it; the guests also die in turn.”

So it behooves each one of us, both the wealthy and the 99 percent to have access to this medicine when it is developed. The Heinz Dilemma is really about who is able to afford good healthcare. We know the private system can’t provide this. Just think about the druggist’s attitude in the Heinz Dilemma.