The uninformed public, led by the misinformed 'experts'
posted 7-29-2010 2:51 p.m. Central

 
Sometimes, disinformation is spread by perfectly well-meaning people who are less informed than they think they are. And they don’t even realize they’re doing it. Trouble is, if their credentials look good at first glance, the rest of us may not realize it, either. This is one of the frustrations of covering health care reform.

Case in point: a New York cardiologist volunteers to provide aid for several months in Haiti after the earthquake. He’s part of a team helping to reinstate cardiac care at a city hospital in Port-au-Prince. A noble deed, well and good. While he’s there, he notices that the “sudden availability in Haiti of free high-quality care from foreign doctors put enormous competitive pressure on the private local doctors, who had already been working under difficult conditions.” This influx of foreign aid causes local clinics to lose business. The cardiologist wonders “if the same would happen to private medical services back in the United States were our government to suddenly provide high-quality, low-cost health care.” So he writes an op-ed piece for the New York Times with suggestions for our health care reform efforts, based on his experience in Haiti.

I begin to see where this guy's argument is going and shake my head, but I keep reading, giving him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Yet already the misunderstandings are piling up.

Getting the health care discussion wrong
posted 2-8-2008 10:14 a.m.

 
Have you noticed that ever since the media — mainstream and new media alike — began marginalizing Dennis Kucinich during the presidential primary campaign, the conversation about health care reform began drifting away from any real reform?

What was a public dialog about national health insurance and universal coverage suddenly began to slide into one about whose plan would cover more people. That was a real change in conversation, and it amounts to an unchallenged bait and switch.

Now, nobody seems to have noticed that the discussion is no longer about universal coverage — because, of course, universal literally means everyone would be covered. And neither Sen. Clinton’s proposal, nor the less ambitious (read: superficial) plans proffered by Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain, let alone Gov. Huckabee, was ever intended to cover everyone. And though much has been made of Tom Daschle's book on health reform, there really isn't anything in there that will truly cover everyone, either. If voters think that any of these proposals would cover everyone, or almost everyone, they’re sadly mistaken. Remarkably, the press hasn’t pointed this out yet, probably because it didn't notice, either.