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Partisanship I'd argue is bad. Politics, however, is not. The idea that we should ignore the state of our healthcare system because we find politics icky is co

Partisanship I'd argue is bad. Politics, however, is not. The idea that we should ignore the state of our healthcare system because we find politics icky is counter-productive to building an effective system for dealing with public health systems. We can't avoid facts because they're uncomfortable and the public needs to be engaged with political leadership for problems to be solved. That's politics. You don't "save lives" by saying discussion of the healthcare system is off-limits. The two things are quite related to one another!

swsieber 7y ago
Actually, you do save lives because more people will listen. Pushing to change the healthcare in the U.S. is a very partisan thing.
- elicash 7y ago
  If one of our two political parties was calling for everybody to lick doorknobs in areas where there have been coronavirus outbreaks, does arguing against that suddenly become partisan? How about experts talk about what's in their experience and then it's the job of open-minded citizens to evaluate it, hopefully with good political leadership from elected officials? Now, it's fair to weigh different public health experts advice, and it's fair to also weigh what experts on economics have to say, so that we can evaluate pros and cons. But this idea that experts shouldn't talk about healthcare systems that need to be changed in order to better meet the moment because talking about it is "politics"... Sorry, but I don't think it makes sense. You don't solve problems by running away from them. Experts can do more than say that we should wash our hands. In fact, we need them to!
  - throw7337 7y ago
    Honestly there are people who just do not care. Article has interesting content. But political stuff is just like ads, you ignore it, or go away if it becomes too annoying. I am not even from US, we have universal healthcare, but it is even more broken than yours.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    All of the experts who are qualified to speak on this topic and everyone else writing about it should probably be focusing solely on the ongoing pandemic because there is literally nothing we can realistically do about the partisan stuff until that is resolved. Even if we all came together in a Kumbaya moment right now, between legilastive procedure, court challenges, bureaucratic inertia, and the chaos caused by said ongoing pandemic nothing productive would happen anyway. We won't bring pricing transparency and trust busting to healthcare or medicare for all or whatever anyone's ideology calls for until the dust has settled. Until that happens, it's just going to keep pushing us apart while the best opportunity since the 2000s to work past the partisan divide is staring us right in the face.
    - elicash 7y ago
      Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics. There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership. If you're making a narrower point about Medicare for All, I'd put that in a different category than most of these political recommendations simply because it would take years to implement. But that's different from arguing that we should ignore the merits of sound public health recommendations on the basis that some people have an ideological aversion to hearing it.
      - akiselev 7y ago
        > Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics. > There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership. I'm arguing that any such attempt is doomed to failure if it so much as even stirs the beast of partisanship because of how far gone our civic discourse is. I believe most or all of the things you listed can be done quickly by the executive branches of local, state, and federal governments within the bounds of existing legislation. At this point, anything but the most bipartisan bills are impossible to do on a short time frame. The place to be is lobbying governors, political appointees that lead state and federal agencies, and civil servants on the ground. They have unilateral power to actually do something about the situation because emergency powers are very broad (Lincoln used his to suspend habeas corpus!) and justices will be even more hesitant to reign in executive power during a pandemic than whatever immigration state of emergency enabled the travel bans. That way, even judicial branch challenges will slow down partisan interference instead of obstructing the intended goal. I hope I'm wrong and our legislature does pull it together under threat of an emergency. After all, if JFK getting shut down was enough to end the government shutdown, maybe a pandemic cratering the global economy is more than enough to bring us together, at least for a little bit. However if the goal is to get something done instead of arguing over what to do, I'd look to the executive branch, not legislative. The former is meant to do, the latter is meant to argue. Edit: I wasn't trying to make a point with medicare for all, just trying to pick out some examples from different sides of the isle (single payer on the left, free market reforms on the right). I'll admit I don't know enough about either group of ideologies to predict which relevant bills would be bipartisan enough to pass quickly but based on how antagonistic partisans have become, I don't think it'd be much since we don't have much time for the normal pork barreling process to work.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    If an obese person has a heart attack, do you really want the doctors discussing weight loss when they acutely need to be dealing with cardiac arrest?
    - elicash 7y ago
      This author has "a masters degree in public health from the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a background in infectious diseases and vaccine development." They are not literally at somebody's deathbed trying to prevent them from dying at this moment. So really, here's the comparison: 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. Do I think doctors should be afraid to talk about obesity because it might turn people off listening to their other recommendations? No, listen to experts.
- endorphone 7y ago
  "Pushing to change the healthcare in the U.S. is a very partisan thing." Which is outrageous. The manner in which basic societal discussion get short-circuited into being partisan is grotesque. Though recall that Donald J. Trump promised universal healthcare (several times). Seems like it isn't partisan at all.
- erentz 7y ago
  Except it's not. Improving health care in the US is actually very centrist and polls show majority supported among independents, democrats, and republicans. Albeit slight more on the left than the right. Pretending it's partisan is just a way to quell progress on something that most people are in favor of.
  - dave_b 7y ago
    “Improving health care” != “single-payer system now!”
    - erentz 7y ago
      Well actually I was thinking about Medicare for All specifically, eg: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412552-majority-of-republicans-say-the-support-medicare-for-all-poll https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412552-maj...
      - dave_b 7y ago
        Nobody cares what you were thinking about. This whole thread is based on the author's decision to insert a push for single-payer healthcare into an article about the outbreak. And the point is that a general agreement that healthcare should be improved doesn't justify pushing a particular, partisan solution in this context. That applies whether you would push for single-payer, medicare for all, or a true free market.
khawkins 7y ago
You're missing the point, the problem that is if you're trying to offer credible expert opinion on how to deal with a crisis, you undermine those opinions by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand. Sure, you can argue that single-payer healthcare would have been good to solve this crisis and others would certainly argue that it would make things worse, but the debate is totally fruitless because implementing such a system will take years--well after coronavirus is either endemic or wiped out. Thus, even bringing it up makes me question whether you, as an expert, are capable of divorcing your personal bias from your scientific objectivity. I immediately think, "is this person speaking from their objective expertise, or do they look for the data that satisfies their political arguments, and ignoring the rest?" Scientists should tell people the facts as objectively as possible because that is the purpose of the field and discipline. Leave activism to others, who will use the facts to come to whatever conclusions they can.
- elicash 7y ago
  How far should scientists take this principle? If a political party decided to take the view that this whole thing was no big deal and that big events in key geographies shouldn't be cancelled, should public health experts stay out of it because it could make people ignore their other recommendations? Experts should offer their views and the burden is on us to be open-minded, regardless of our ideologies. There's a separate point you make about what things can and cannot be done in this moment. But that's not the original point made. Most of the "politics" recommendations could in fact be done during this time. Some are even being discussed, short-term.
  - matthew-hale 7y ago
    khawkins said (emphasis mine): > by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand which seems to be their core issue. Some proposed solutions may become political as you describe, but that doesn't change their utility as proposed solutions to the problem. Whereas it seems like the entire section "Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics" could have been omitted entirely without losing any value related to slowing the spread of COVID-19.

swsieber 7y ago

Actually, you do save lives because more people will listen. Pushing to change the healthcare in the U.S. is a very partisan thing.

elicash 7y ago
If one of our two political parties was calling for everybody to lick doorknobs in areas where there have been coronavirus outbreaks, does arguing against that suddenly become partisan? How about experts talk about what's in their experience and then it's the job of open-minded citizens to evaluate it, hopefully with good political leadership from elected officials? Now, it's fair to weigh different public health experts advice, and it's fair to also weigh what experts on economics have to say, so that we can evaluate pros and cons. But this idea that experts shouldn't talk about healthcare systems that need to be changed in order to better meet the moment because talking about it is "politics"... Sorry, but I don't think it makes sense. You don't solve problems by running away from them. Experts can do more than say that we should wash our hands. In fact, we need them to!
- throw7337 7y ago
  Honestly there are people who just do not care. Article has interesting content. But political stuff is just like ads, you ignore it, or go away if it becomes too annoying. I am not even from US, we have universal healthcare, but it is even more broken than yours.
- akiselev 7y ago
  All of the experts who are qualified to speak on this topic and everyone else writing about it should probably be focusing solely on the ongoing pandemic because there is literally nothing we can realistically do about the partisan stuff until that is resolved. Even if we all came together in a Kumbaya moment right now, between legilastive procedure, court challenges, bureaucratic inertia, and the chaos caused by said ongoing pandemic nothing productive would happen anyway. We won't bring pricing transparency and trust busting to healthcare or medicare for all or whatever anyone's ideology calls for until the dust has settled. Until that happens, it's just going to keep pushing us apart while the best opportunity since the 2000s to work past the partisan divide is staring us right in the face.
  - elicash 7y ago
    Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics. There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership. If you're making a narrower point about Medicare for All, I'd put that in a different category than most of these political recommendations simply because it would take years to implement. But that's different from arguing that we should ignore the merits of sound public health recommendations on the basis that some people have an ideological aversion to hearing it.
    - akiselev 7y ago
      > Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics. > There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership. I'm arguing that any such attempt is doomed to failure if it so much as even stirs the beast of partisanship because of how far gone our civic discourse is. I believe most or all of the things you listed can be done quickly by the executive branches of local, state, and federal governments within the bounds of existing legislation. At this point, anything but the most bipartisan bills are impossible to do on a short time frame. The place to be is lobbying governors, political appointees that lead state and federal agencies, and civil servants on the ground. They have unilateral power to actually do something about the situation because emergency powers are very broad (Lincoln used his to suspend habeas corpus!) and justices will be even more hesitant to reign in executive power during a pandemic than whatever immigration state of emergency enabled the travel bans. That way, even judicial branch challenges will slow down partisan interference instead of obstructing the intended goal. I hope I'm wrong and our legislature does pull it together under threat of an emergency. After all, if JFK getting shut down was enough to end the government shutdown, maybe a pandemic cratering the global economy is more than enough to bring us together, at least for a little bit. However if the goal is to get something done instead of arguing over what to do, I'd look to the executive branch, not legislative. The former is meant to do, the latter is meant to argue. Edit: I wasn't trying to make a point with medicare for all, just trying to pick out some examples from different sides of the isle (single payer on the left, free market reforms on the right). I'll admit I don't know enough about either group of ideologies to predict which relevant bills would be bipartisan enough to pass quickly but based on how antagonistic partisans have become, I don't think it'd be much since we don't have much time for the normal pork barreling process to work.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  If an obese person has a heart attack, do you really want the doctors discussing weight loss when they acutely need to be dealing with cardiac arrest?
  - elicash 7y ago
    This author has "a masters degree in public health from the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a background in infectious diseases and vaccine development." They are not literally at somebody's deathbed trying to prevent them from dying at this moment. So really, here's the comparison: 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. Do I think doctors should be afraid to talk about obesity because it might turn people off listening to their other recommendations? No, listen to experts.
endorphone 7y ago
"Pushing to change the healthcare in the U.S. is a very partisan thing." Which is outrageous. The manner in which basic societal discussion get short-circuited into being partisan is grotesque. Though recall that Donald J. Trump promised universal healthcare (several times). Seems like it isn't partisan at all.
erentz 7y ago
Except it's not. Improving health care in the US is actually very centrist and polls show majority supported among independents, democrats, and republicans. Albeit slight more on the left than the right. Pretending it's partisan is just a way to quell progress on something that most people are in favor of.
- dave_b 7y ago
  “Improving health care” != “single-payer system now!”
  - erentz 7y ago
    Well actually I was thinking about Medicare for All specifically, eg: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412552-majority-of-republicans-say-the-support-medicare-for-all-poll https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412552-maj...
    - dave_b 7y ago
      Nobody cares what you were thinking about. This whole thread is based on the author's decision to insert a push for single-payer healthcare into an article about the outbreak. And the point is that a general agreement that healthcare should be improved doesn't justify pushing a particular, partisan solution in this context. That applies whether you would push for single-payer, medicare for all, or a true free market.

khawkins 7y ago

You're missing the point, the problem that is if you're trying to offer credible expert opinion on how to deal with a crisis, you undermine those opinions by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand. Sure, you can argue that single-payer healthcare would have been good to solve this crisis and others would certainly argue that it would make things worse, but the debate is totally fruitless because implementing such a system will take years--well after coronavirus is either endemic or wiped out. Thus, even bringing it up makes me question whether you, as an expert, are capable of divorcing your personal bias from your scientific objectivity. I immediately think, "is this person speaking from their objective expertise, or do they look for the data that satisfies their political arguments, and ignoring the rest?" Scientists should tell people the facts as objectively as possible because that is the purpose of the field and discipline. Leave activism to others, who will use the facts to come to whatever conclusions they can.

elicash 7y ago
How far should scientists take this principle? If a political party decided to take the view that this whole thing was no big deal and that big events in key geographies shouldn't be cancelled, should public health experts stay out of it because it could make people ignore their other recommendations? Experts should offer their views and the burden is on us to be open-minded, regardless of our ideologies. There's a separate point you make about what things can and cannot be done in this moment. But that's not the original point made. Most of the "politics" recommendations could in fact be done during this time. Some are even being discussed, short-term.
- matthew-hale 7y ago
  khawkins said (emphasis mine): > by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand which seems to be their core issue. Some proposed solutions may become political as you describe, but that doesn't change their utility as proposed solutions to the problem. Whereas it seems like the entire section "Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics" could have been omitted entirely without losing any value related to slowing the spread of COVID-19.