How Osama Bin Laden ruined health care

No, really. A threat needs to have certain properties “to ring our alarm bells,” says Gilbert, author of the 2006 bestseller Stumbling on Happiness. One is that it needs to come with a human face—preferably an evil-looking one; extra points for beard and mustache—since evolution shaped the brain to pay attention to and leap into action at threats posed by humans. (Evolution is too slow to have shaped us to become outraged by, say, lower reimbursement for branded drugs than generics.) But the mess that is the current health-care system in the United States “hasn’t been visited upon us by an evil monster,” says Gilbert. “It’s the fault of a faceless ‘system,’ and that’s not something we’re wired to jump up and down about.” If a bin Laden or any other specific villain were behind the troubles with the current system, you can bet that the percent of people calling reform a top priority would soar. (Indeed, when an individual doctor denies some poor soul ER care or when a hospital dumps a poor patient on the street, public outrage boils over, because the victim and villain come with a face and a name.)