The Health insurance field is filled with language styles...you know, spin.
To decipher the spin, perhaps this will be helpful.
Empowerment: Employers are saving bucks by phasing out employer sponsored health care plan options
Health Savings Account: Maybe you won't notice that you have less health insurance if we give you a tax break on the bucks you lay out yourself.
Single Payer: Uh oh...COMMUNISM! Oh wait, that's spin, single payer means just that, oversight of health insurance payments.
Universal health coverage: For politicians that means get 'em covered by something even if it stinks. For docs it means we want to be paid. For health insurers it means...get 'em covered with some illusory "policy". And for the rich it means...uh oh..COMMUNISM! Oh wait, that's spin.
When all else fails, we start seeing the more subtle, "you're crazy" argument or "you don't know what you're talking about"...the two dismissals of the threatened that effectively cut out discussion. In our personal lives we've all heard this one.
When it comes to health services we hear a lot of people claiming the inexpertise of those offering opinions. On an episode of one of the Law and Orders, a flim flam man trying to elevate himself by getting close to politicians (who ended up murdering someone), was put on the stand and accused of trying to make himself important...even submitting a health reform plan of his own to his politician mentor (no bigger sign of psychosis I suppose). The YOU'RE CRAZY argument.
There is no quicker way to shut down dialogue, education, compromise, and agreement than dismissing the other party as "crazy." The you're crazy argument is a way of saying I'm doing such and such and tough on you. In cases where people do not value the relationship, in cases where one party has the upper hand, and in cases where the issue is not of enduring relevance (meaning it comes up again and again), the you're crazy argument works. Reasonable people walk away because they know that they're up against a brick wall, with the intellect of the same.
But the "you're crazy" argument has a limited shelf life and it's reaching its end in the health services arena...what we have isn't working, lack of cost controls on services and insurance are increasing the expense of these services while quality and access to services is diminishing. We now have the bobble heads muttering a boisterous "You're CRAZY," "You're NUTS", speaking to an ever larger group of "YOU". And they're getting meaner about it.
Don't stop. Every idea has a value because we have not come up with a solution to our health services crisis. Exposure of government lobbying efforts to promote one interested party or another in the health services industry is meaningful because we are enabling big business at the expense of individuals and individuals need to know that this is NOT what free capital markets means. The status of our health services industry still depends on consumers WILLING to tolerate it out of fear.
Eventually after all the fat. smoking, aging, chronically ill misfits who have supported this government and its policies favoring health insurance companies and physicians die out, we'll have a country of super-healthy young folk who will use their status to respond to no coverage for lots of money, mandatory screenings for diseases for which they are not at risk, taxation in the form of penalties imposed for choosing not to buy a product in our market place, (specifically illusory health "insurance" plans) who will maybe be bold enough to respond to no services for lots of money with a hearty....YOU're CRAZY!
Our citizenry is our biggest resource and until we muster up the same concern for one another that we have shown regarding "going green" and being kind to the environment, we fall short.
