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Negotiation Begins at Home
By anitamckay on 2009-11-25 08:25:32
This is not an article about the health care debate. It is an article about how we communicate about issues such as health
care. A detractor who posts occasional comments here has asserted that there is no difference between characterizing a
person and objecting to that person's behavior. In fact, how we talk to each other is important. At a recent rally in favor of
reducing carbon emissions to save our world for future generations, I saw a sign by a petition table that gave me pause. The
sign read: "Do you want an insurance company CEO coming between you and your doctor?" My first reaction was "yes,"
thinking of three doctors in my past who, to put it bluntly, tried to kill me with their incompetence. I'd take any kind of
intervention with bad medicine. Of course, the meaning of the sign was a reference to health plans that at times disagree
with the necessity of a course of tests or treatments recommended by a physician. The sign illustrated to me the kind of non-
dialogue going on from the edges of our two-party division, and which is threatening our country with destruction. If we
don't learn to stop picking scapegoats to demonize, and learn how to see more than one side of an issue, there doesn't seem
to be a way to go forward without increased conflict. Multi-faceted, open dialogue can be one aspect (but only one) of
conflict resolution. I'll continue with the example of the healthcare screaming that is going on. Can there be any question
that our system is broken? We spend double what other industrialized countries do, for much worse outcomes. Our system is
deficient in that there are so many people in this country without access to healthcare. General practitioners are becoming a
thing of the past, adding expense and delay to the system. We are facing an overall shortage of doctors. The question is how
we fix things. How we don't fix them (or any other conflict) is by continuing partisan bickering. We don't fix it by calling
one person or group the cause. Let's take the example of the sign about the CEO's. Insurance companies make an easy target,
but are they the whole problem? And what happens when someone is attacked? They go first on the defensive and then to
the offensive. Discussion stops. Companies profits and salaries can be cut (although I don't hear NY politicians or
employees offering salary cuts to help solve this state's financial crisis), but there's still the problem of doctors who send
patients off on a guessing game of tests and specialists. To that accusation, doctors can point out the patients who want to
live forever at any cost and will sue the doctor if they don't. And so on. The fact is, when we live together in a society, we
are all the cause of the problem. Our problems have grown up out of our desire to have it all. They have grown up because
we have mistaken a lack of planning with freedom. It's time for us to stop with the slogans and get down to discussions of all
our conflicts, in ways that are not one-sided, and in ways that do not demonize one group, even corporate CEO's. Let's find
ways that work.
