It's an age-old debate. One that has drawn the interest of the entire country and the outcome hangs in the balance of which team has the strongest players and the best defensive and offensive strategies. You're thinking Super bowl? Not in the traditional gridiron sense. Rather, I'm referring to the Superbowl otherwise known as the push for health care reform. While enormous work and discussion has taken place around this here in D.C. and nationwide, it's still an issue that has experts and amateurs alike scratching our heads about how this is all going to play out.
On Thursday night I attended the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association event called "Legislative Agenda on Health Care Reform." For such a formal title, it was actually a refreshing discussion from a panel of industry and policy experts who broke the whole debate down for us into chewable, bite-sized pieces. The HBA - a professional organization that caters to the education and advancement of women and men in the healthcare industry - has a knack for putting together events that are timely and relevant, with this event being no exception. In this case, bringing this discussion together just 24 hours after the State of the Union address couldn't have been better timed.
Among the panelists, which included Julie Barnes of the New America Foundation, John Schaeffler of DaVita and Tim Clark of Sanofi-Aventis, we were able to sum up a few absolutes. One is that this is an incredibly complicated issue that becomes more complex as it lags on. A second is that without reform we face a grim economic road ahead. A third, and most compelling point to me, was health care reform is impossible to communicate. I recognize that I'm a healthcare communicator, so I'm biased, but it's incredible how often we hear that same theme.
In the current era of full access to communications vehicles and a national audience that's been trained to react to the 10-second sound bite, we've done ourselves a bit of a disservice. We've enabled the masses the ability to tell and "sell" a story no matter whether fact or fiction. The speed at which we're communicating is impressive and powerful, but what's missing in this particular case is the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. In other words, what's really in the proposed legislation? What is the misinformation we're hearing that's not actually in the proposed legislation? And what is the health consumer to do in the meantime? The answer to that last question was answered as one of the final absolutes of our discussion last night. And that is, sit and wait.
From where I sit, I would say the health consumer also needs to start listening beyond the 10 second sound bite, start taking a long-term view and hope that our political leadership can check their party lines at the door so that those of us who voted them in can be assured that we won't be bankrupted by our own unhealthy country.
