We need more chesterton in medicine!

The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton recently opened registration for its 43rd Annual Chesterton Conference, to be held from July 25-27th, 2024 in Philadelphia. A prolific writer, Chesterton’s boisterous spirit and bounding joy come through across his innumerable works written in a wide array of genres. His playful use of language and succinct forms of expression are highly quotable.
G.K. Chesterton, along with Hilaire Belloc and other early 20th Century thinkers, was a vigorous proponent of the economic theory of distributism. Based on the principles of Catholic social teaching, distributism advocates for a wider distribution of private property and the ownership of families over their means of sustenance. It is a rebuke of both socialism (in which property is controlled by the state) and laissez-faire capitalism (in which property tends toward concentration in monopolies).
Considering the state of the healthcare system in the United States today, those who believe that the average working-class American ought to be able to access primary care without relying on the insurance company cartels or a government program would do well to reflect on what medicine might look like if G.K. Chesterton were a doctor today. 

--James O. Breen, M.D.