Healthcare costs are not only a problem affecting budgets, taxes and government waste. Healthcare costs also mean that healthcare policy and healthcare reform effectively happen through the spending of big dollars by individuals and immediately benefiting individuals who are part of the healthcare industry. The people who are to be affected by the social investment and who ultimately must change behaviors to impact their health status are quite distant from the decision making and from the economy that healthcare reform creates. Ultimately, healthcare costs and consequences will be more impacted by the kitchen table decisions of millions of families than by the billions of dollars that health professionals, consultants and go-betweens will garner from the current healthcare reform top down process.
“As government officials, community organizations and advocates gear up the consumer information and assistance efforts that will surround this fall’s open enrollment for the health insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), much of the public remains confused about the status of the health law, according to the April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Four in ten Americans (42 percent) are unaware that the ACA is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who don’t know whether or not the ACA remains law. And about half the public says they do not have enough information about the health reform law to understand how it will impact their own family, a share that rises among the uninsured and low-income households.”
More via Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: April 2013 | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Filed under: access to education, Blogosphere, Civic Engagement, consumers, Education Policy, Health Literacy, Health Policy, Healthcare Reform, health reform, Knowledge, Attitudes and Behavior in health, health information, health reform and community preparedness
April 26, 2013 • 4:03 am 0
Social policies: Time to scrap affirmative action | The Economist
Affirmative action rears its ugly head once again as the usually intellectually rigorous London Economist magazine publishes an article (link below) making an argument on the deleterious effects of affirmative action policies for beneficiaries, institutions and societies in general.
The main problem with the article is that it sees people of color (or ethnic minorities) as both the “weak classes” and the beneficiaries of these policies. The article writer fails to understand that a good number of people belonging to the so called “majority” or “white” as the article calls them, are also tremendously disadvantaged and cyclically in poverty by region and sometimes by religious group or region of the country (Catholics compared to Episcopalians and people from the Appalachia region compared to New Yorkers).
The overwhelming majority of people in America are so called “White.” Poverty is not simply a skin color problem. Affirmative action is not perfect and plenty of examples can be found of cases in which it is abused or inappropriately taken advantage of. This does not mean that there’s no need to address historical differences between groups that have experienced circumstances which precluded their development in the educational and business fields, for example.
When society invests in the children of the poor to ensure that future generations can continue to prosper and contribute to society in greater ways we all benefit.
When specific groups have been locked out for so long that lack of education, sophistication or opportunity defines their relationship to society, then society has a responsibility to address that condition. Whether we see that “responsibility” as a moral or as a self interested proposition, does not really matter. The fact is that when societies invest in their citizens they benefit all of society and improve their lot vis a vis other societies who experience the drag and social dislocation caused by an underclass. The following article in the Economist fails to understand this simple logic. Read it and tell us what you think?
“ABOVE the entrance to America’s Supreme Court four words are carved: “Equal justice under law”. The court is pondering whether affirmative action breaks that promise. The justices recently accepted a case concerning a vote in Michigan that banned it, and will …”
via Social policies: Time to scrap affirmative action | The Economist.
Rate this:
Share this Policy Think Shop Resource:
Like this:
Filed under: African American, Blogosphere, Children and Poverty, Culture Think, Demographic Change, Discrimination, Education Policy, ethnicity in politics, Feminization of Poverty, Gender, Gender Policy, ideology, Intolerance, Latinos, Minority Males, News, Policy ThinkShop Comments on other media platforms, Affirmative Action, growing American minorities, race and poverty