Improve the messaging.
Why is quality healthcare for all Americans so hard to achieve? Greed, ignorance, and bad messaging. It’s big business, their leaders and their impact on politics that demonstrate the worst aspects of greed. It’s too many Americans who are woefully ignorant of how to reason with facts. And it’s Democrats and the mainstream media who are doing the terrible job of messaging.
The greed of corporations and too many individuals is beyond dispute. Trying to simply legislate greed out of existence is foolish. We can pass some legislation to temper greed but I recommend changing the incentives for greed [read Freakonomics, Levitt & Dubner], more on this later.
After greed, it’s ignorance that is holding healthcare reform back. Too many reports and interviews rely on numbers and impersonal logic. ‘Ten million without healthcare,’ doesn’t compute to the working class as well as ‘Your son can’t get treatment for a life threatening illness,’ does. [Go back and review your Marshall McLuhan.] Here’s what I mean:
Labels:
I’m going to use a few socio economic and political labels in this essay so it’s important to label myself first. I grew up working-class on the Southside of Chicago. I’m the only one in my family who has graduated from college (University of Illinois). I have taught the disadvantaged and at risk here in Los Angeles, California (LAUSD) for over 25 years. I’ve traveled the world and hung in the hood. I consider myself liberal in my views.