Commentary
We need health care that's not bipartisan, but nonpartisan
by Will Nicholson, M.D.I have spent the last six months navigating the consumer health insurance market and watching the national health care debate. With national health care reform I believe that we have an unprecedented opportunity to change our nation for the better, but I also share in the national frustration with what has taken place so far.
Shaping up America's health care delivery system is a daunting task on its own. Center the effort not on the raw facts and unflinching logic of science but instead on the sound-bite driven dogma and transparent self-interest of American politics, and it's little wonder our nation's efforts seem to be foundering.
When it comes to something as important as the health and safety of America's citizens, the ulterior motives of any political party should have no bearing on policy and no seat at the negotiating table. Elected officials should recognize this and conduct themselves accordingly.
If our leaders cannot manage to have a fact-based discussion about the objective risks and benefits of health care reform, then they should do the responsible thing and delegate the job to someone who can.
America's leaders are losing our trust. And when it comes to making decisions about health and medicine, the requirement of trust is non-negotiable.
People in my profession respect this and go to great lengths to win our patients' trust. When health care reform was presented as a clear national imperative by President Obama, many people trusted his word. When legislation fell into gridlock on unflinchingly partisan lines, their trust started to waiver. When the name-calling started, their trust grew thinner. And when the media pinned America's hopes and fears about health reform on the election of a former nude model as a senator from Massachusetts, many of us lost hope entirely.
Americans have a visceral understanding that sound medical judgment shouldn't waiver with the political super-majority. And they are correct.
In clinical medicine, a physician's best practices remain the same regardless of his or her political persuasion. I suspect that the same is true on a national scale. The urgency to reform health care for the average person hasn't changed; our trust in the reformers has.
There is still a clear path to effective health care reform. But to get there, we are going to have to kick partisanship into the back seat.
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Will Nicholson, M.D., practices family medicine in Maplewood.
Comments (5)
How disingenuous .. I started to take interest in what you were saying until you labeled a distinguished ex-state senator from Massachusetts that happen to have posed many years ago to raise funds for law school as "former nude model". You blew it .. your own partisanship became very obvious. That's the real problem with this whole discourse.
Dear Dr. Nicholson,
Excellent headline, but no substance. I agree with comment #1 that your cover for nonpartisan ship was disguised undoubtfully at the and of your article. My frustration grows even bigger when opinionated people refuse to account for the obvious: people are disgusted with the process of making and the content of the proposed legislation which do nothing but to service the political agenda of certain layers of not so popular ideologies interest groups and increase access to health services. Nothing in the legislation offers a control over the increasing cost. As a physician, if you practice should know that without addressing the malpractice situation long term spending will be never achieved. ER Docs will continue ordering CT scan for every headache and abdominal pain and you will continue practice defensively as they are. Then who do you thing is going to enrol in medical school to face increasing cost of very long and stressful education with the prospective of decreasing reimbursement, increasing cost, increasing patient load, skyrocketing amount of regulations from insurances and government so they can be sued? How about the foreign grads, do you thing they will be willing to go through all the hoops so to face the partial list of issues mentioned above, or everything will be passed on PA's and Nurse Practitioners. I am scared about the future of my health as everybody should be
This is a very thoughtful and relevant commentary on our current juncture in the health care reform process. If the process, as suggested, was conducted on a factual basis, we could probably accomplish the task with a committee of a half dozen or so educated and intelligent people in half the time. Instead, we are getting nowhere fast, and the media, by turning the election in Massachusetts in to a referendum on health care, has only served to confuse the situation further. The problem is really not that complicated, but when we now see the common man so confused about what is in his own best interest, to the point of even voting against it, the process has turned in to something rather sad. Hopefully, the process will go on and reason will ultimately triumph over politics and fear.
While your premise is 100% correct, Gabriel and Boyan have it right -- it is inappropriate to claim a need for non-partisanship in the context of an article with partisan language.
One problem with the nonpartisan theory, at this point, is that it's already become highly politicised. In other words, the different ideas and terms used in any debate or discussion over healthcare reform are already associated with the terms "conservative" and "liberal".
The best solution for now, as far as I can see it, is to find less ambitious areas that both parties can agree on (such as reducing costs), give it some time, and then have a nonpartisan group attempt to tackle additional measures.
I agree with a lot that has been said in the article. I think it is important to point out to Gabriel and others that Dr. Nicholson didn't refer to senator Brown a former nude model, but that he was pointing out that the media focused their efforts on that part of his past.
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