TL: You really can’t. There’s a willingness on the part of the press to accept what they’re told, without weighing claims and seeing if one claim is more meritorious than another. We have this cult of balance, and it’s a problem.
In the US, you need to remember one thing; what was passed was basically a Republican plan. The ideas had been in the academic literature for years, and they were ideas Republicans would be totally comfortable with. But instead, the Republicans have run against their own plan, so to speak. And when the press fell down on the job of bringing the people along, it made it easy for Republicans to move on this strategy.
CS: In Britain, aspects of this reform were done by a coalition, which we are not used to. It had elements from both parties, which didn’t necessarily fit together well. Once it became controversial in the press, liberal Democrats forced a series of changes onto the bill to address some of the fears that the media had raised. What they did made a coherent piece of legislation a total mess.
TL: I guess we have some similarities here. We’re not really sure how the Affordable Care Act will play out, and you’re not really sure how the NHS reforms are going to play out. We’ll find out!
Related stories:
Healthcare in Great Britain vs. healthcare in the USA: part one
How the phantom of ‘socialized medicine’ came to be
The specter of ‘Socialized Medicine’ rides again
TL: You really can’t. There’s a willingness on the part of the press to accept what they’re told, without weighing claims and seeing if one claim is more meritorious than another. We have this cult of balance, and it’s a problem.
In the US, you need to remember one thing; what was passed was basically a Republican plan. The ideas had been in the academic literature for years, and they were ideas Republicans would be totally comfortable with. But instead, the Republicans have run against their own plan, so to speak. And when the press fell down on the job of bringing the people along, it made it easy for Republicans to move on this strategy.
Amen to that. The lack of real, probing reporting on the health care act is a serious failure in the MSM. The fact that the enabling legislation effectively prevents the IRS from collecting the tax imposed when someone refuses to buy health insurance is almost totally ignored. There is no attempt to either explain this or to assess the potential impact on the costs of the program. If I were still an editor, I'd be angry if a reporter submitted to me the sort of lazy, "balanced" junk I regularly read in the press about the act.
#1 Posted by Tom Barry, CJR on Wed 10 Oct 2012 at 10:29 AM
Hope to hear more about this surprising info about how NICE advocates for rather than denies good care:
CS: It’s important to note that what NICE has done is make it more likely someone will get treatment, because you will often find a treatment NICE has approved that is in fact not given locally because of these rationing decisions by local health boards. They might say it’s too expensive, we don’t have the money here. But the fact that NICE exists and has said this is a cost-effective treatment means that people can say well, no, hang on a second. I should be getting that because it’s NICE-approved and therefore you should be giving it to me. It has given people the power to demand treatment that NICE has approved.
But NICE is not the same as IPAB (right?). And IPAB is the current focus for "death panel" fear mongering? Does IPAB have potential to evolve like NICE?
It's possible that most Americans know the most about European health care through through British TV & film---we might know the British system better than the others. I have wondered if Doc Martin is good or bad advertising for universal care, particularly because it focuses on a surgeon reluctantly practicing primary care and the doctor's office looks old and run down. But just recently William & Mary and Call the Midwife portray very engaging struggles to deliver care by very passionate, caring, and competent health professionals---who are not MDs. So we get mixed glimpses of British care---but very little about other countries. We probably have no other view of the French system than the death of Diana and in Michael Moore's Sicko. MM covered Canada but elsewhere very little about it. International Mystery on MHZ shows a little bit about some others, mostly Sweden but occasionally Germany, some Italian. So other than TV & film, we have few opportunities to learn (accurately or inaccurately) about other health systems.
Good info presented here. Hope to see/hear more about it.
#2 Posted by MB, CJR on Thu 11 Oct 2012 at 01:09 PM