The following is a transcript from a Daily Remedy original video presentation:
Today I want to talk about something that’s going to become a major issue in the upcoming year, the 2024 election cycle, and that is the degradation of health policy in public discourse. A lot of words; let me simplify it. Politicians, presidential aspirants, and other thought leaders who have a loud voice are going to use health policy to advance their own agenda by degrading complex issues into simplified talking points and bombastic rhetoric.
There are three main ways in which they’re going to do this. One, they’re going to oversimplify. Two, they’re going to conflate. And three, they’re going to polarize. As patients and as members of the public, we have to stop this degradation of health policy and focus on returning to a point where we can have discourse on complex health care topics in which we all have different perspectives but we’re willing to listen to one another and share each other’s viewpoints with the understanding that while we may not all agree, we at least agree to find common ground.
In health care, the most sacred, sacrosanct aspect of society, the hospitals, the clinics, where patients come and receive care for their clinical conditions to heal their body, should not be subjected to the same vitriol as politicians are placing on many of the health issues that we hear today. Remember, these politicians, regardless of what side they stand, regardless of how they posture, they have more in common with you than they have with you. And as patients and as members of the public, we have to take what they say with a grain of salt and make sure we don’t fall prey to their rhetoric. Again, politicians will try to oversimplify, conflate, and polarize complex health issues.
So let’s discuss how that will happen. And let’s take one key issue that has been making airways since the 70s, abortion. Regardless of what you believe, regardless of what your stance is, we all understand that there are certain clinical cases in which abortion qualifies as a medical emergency. And we all understand that there is a tendency to abuse the procedure if not properly monitored. We can all agree that the extreme states of abortion utilization, extreme over utilization, extreme under utilization are harmful to society. I think we all can agree that the goal is to find some balance between access and oversight. But we have to start by looking at abortion as a medical procedure. We can’t start by looking at it through a non-clinical lens measuring the legality of abortion based on weeks: five weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, when the baby feels pain, when the mother feels something in the belly.
These ad hoc rules and guidelines oversimplify the socioeconomic complexity of abortion, how a woman finds herself in a position to consider an abortion, how a woman weighs different factors in proceeding or not with an abortion. These are very complicated issues that require a certain level of compassion and empathy. And when we conflate a woman’s desire or lack thereof to receive an abortion with their own personalized beliefs, we’re losing that compassion and empathy. And we cannot let the political rhetoric of the day, particularly for politicians, that are looking to solicit votes from taking away that compassion and empathy for one another. Because they’re conflating medical needs with political agendas. And that’s harmful to society. What may be good for the politician is not good for society. And we have to be cognizant of that when we hear these bombastic talking points, as we are likely to do so through 2024 up until November.
Please resist the tendency to polarize the discourse on abortion and try to find common ground based on empathy and compassion, and try to see the perspective from those who may not share the views that you do. Interestingly enough, by engaging in conversation with those you may not agree with, you can actually strengthen the logic and the arguments on your own position. And that’s the point of debate. You become more firm and practical in your own thinking by sharing conversation with those who may not share the same views as you.
So I would encourage those looking at the upcoming election cycle and seeing how the issue of abortion will play out to avoid oversimplification, conflating a medical procedure with non-clinical arguments, and resist the tendency to polarize. The other issue that I would strongly caution the patients and the general public to be weary of is conflating the overdose crisis with immigration. That’s probably just as hot of a button, as hot of an issue as abortion. But it shouldn’t be that way.
We’re blocking the path for sensible policies that can help patients who are vulnerable to addictions or clinical dependencies. Instead, we stigmatize their behavior by falsely associating patients with legitimate medical conditions, substance use dependency, with those who may have nefarious intent in crossing the border illegally. We know the international supply chain of fentanyl includes China and Mexico. China typically sources the parts and the materials to make fentanyl and is typically manufactured in Mexico or other parts of the world, including here in the United States. It’s very convenient and very malicious for a politician to simply say, all the fentanyl is coming across the border through illegal immigration. It touches on very vulnerable talking points. Many patients, many members of the public, know people who have had overdose events or have succumbed to the disease of addiction.
And many people struggle economically and see immigrants as almost contributing to their economic downturn. Both are very sensitive issues: Loss of personal loved ones and loss of income and earning power. To combine them with a false narrative that is designed to get you irate and hateful is very malicious.
Politicians have an incentive to galvanize people to vote for them and they will say things that will make people irate whether they’re fully true or not they may be just true enough and these half truths in healthcare will lead to the destruction of what is fundamental in healthcare, and that is finding a balance, finding a common ground, utilizing principles of empathy and compassion to look at complex healthcare issues. Immigration and overdose-related mortality have some relationship, but not as strong as people would have you believe. Not as strong as the media outlets are portraying it and not as strong as politicians are claiming it to be. They’re oversimplifying a complex relationship by conflating the number of immigrants with the number of overdose deaths. They’re falsely equating numbers in a way that directly creates a link, a cognitive link between the number of immigrants and the number of overdoses and overdose-related mortality.
Please resist the trend to look at the numbers in such a simplified way. There’s data, and then there’s perceptions of the data. We have to make sure we don’t conflate the two, because the numbers can be manipulated, and they can be manipulated in a way to charge you emotionally and make you hateful in ways that you’re not even aware of. That’s where the polarization element comes in.
Once you oversimplify and conflate a complex healthcare issue utilizing disparate concepts in a way that galvanizes the public, you polarize them.
And I fear in this post-pandemic world, with the politicians that are running for office, with the rhetoric that we’re starting to see, there’s going to be an escalation of hateful rhetoric around health care. And it’s going to affect us the most. These politicians, they’ll be able to get health care however they need, whenever they want. But we will struggle. We will face the consequences of their hateful rhetoric, because it’ll be us who have to face issues with access to care, who have to face issues when it comes to health policy not being in favor of the general public. And for that, I ask you guys, as you’re approaching the 2024 election year, look at the rhetoric and avoid the tendency to oversimplify, to conflate, and to polarize.
Look at the nuances and understand the complexity that lies beneath the talking points. It’s a public imperative because if we allow health policy to fall prey to political rhetoric, we won’t have the health care system that we all deserve. And we deserve better than what we’re getting. So we should demand it. Thank you.
