Tradeoffs

Tradeoffs started with a simple idea: There are no silver bullets in health care. Dan Gorenstein learned this covering the business of health care at the public radio show Marketplace. Economists, physicians and researchers taught him even the most well-intentioned plans to fix issues like unaffordable insurance, high prescription drug prices and inequitable care for marginalized patients carried risk and unintended consequences. He struggled to fit all that nuance and complexity into his short radio stories.

  Public Health is Always Political

U.S. pandemic responses are human endeavors led by governments put in place by the people through political processes.

  Today’s Politics May Be Bad for Your Health

Citizens in a new study blame U.S. politics for stress, depression, lost sleep and other physical and mental problems.

 Comparing Biden's And Trump's Different Visions For Health Care

Drawing from President Trump's record on health care and former Vice President Joe Biden's policy proposals, here's a guide to where they stand.

 How Public Health Took Part in Its Own Downfall

The field’s future lies in reclaiming parts of its past that it willingly abandoned.

 We’re Expecting the Wrong Things From the CDC

If you want the CDC to be apolitical, you’re missing the point of public health.

 Why Do Politicians Weaponize Medicare? Because It Works

Why do politicians persistently wield Medicare, as well as Social Security, as weapons? Because history shows that works at the ballot box.

Election 2020 got you down? You could make good on that threat to move to Canada

You might like your health insurance, but you can’t move it here. Sorry, the public option is the only option for hospital and physician care. From time to time people go to court to claim that government-run healthcare violates their individual rights. Fifteen years ago Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition of private insurance was indeed a violation. Since then, no one has sold and no one has bought private insurance for the services covered by the government plan. There’s just no market for it. Yes, we’re that weird.

Universal Health Care Makes Politics Sick

As soon as the government takes on full responsibility for health-care provision, health-care provision becomes political. And given the importance voters quite naturally place on their own health, health-care politics becomes the worst sort: emotionally fraught and inescapable.

COVID-19 Has a Strong Chance of Winning on November 3

Surging infection numbers suggest coronavirus cases will continue to increase in every state until the U.S. election.

Health Politics & Covid-19 = Happiness?

The survey asked consumers to rate their happiness across ten different life areas such as health, work and relationships.

Holding Incumbents Accountable: COVID-19 at the Ballot Box

While the U.S. Republican Party and President Trump’s pandemic response may not be a guaranteed death knell for their election prospects, their response has been criticized as one of the worst in the world, and the Democratic Party has not missed an opportunity to make that perceived failure the center of its national campaign.

Poor US pandemic response will reverberate in health care politics for years, health scholars warn

Two-thirds of respondents expected public health, health infrastructure, and pandemic preparedness to take on more prominent roles going forward. Just under half expected a larger focus on inequalities and inequities. Yet, with major reforms unlikely, scholars are generally skeptical about much progress on the issues.

Why Leaders Lie About Their Health

Nobody wants a weak strongman.

Will U.S. Health Care Ever Be the Same?

When the dust settles on the Covid-19 crisis, the investing public may have to face significant changes in the huge U.S. health-care system.

A history of why the US is the only rich country without universal health care

So why does the US, the only industrialized nation without universal health coverage, also have not only the highest health-care spending in the world—both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP—but also one of the highest levels of government spending on health care per person? And how did it come to be this way? The answer is that the lack of universal coverage and high costs are intimately linked—both economically and historically.

America’s Poor Health Is an Invitation to Tyranny

The lack of universal care has made the U.S. more vulnerable to Trump’s demagogic appeals.

Feel the Bern for a Healthier American Political System

If the political system is broken—a popular notion these days—shouldn't the Americans vote for candidates who fall outside the status quo? Luckily there's someone running for president who can lead us somewhere better.

Fixing Our Priorities; or, Writing Blank Checks to Bureaucracies Is Always a Bad Idea

Los Angeles County voters awarded schools billions of dollars for upgrades and repairs. But half a decade later administrators are supplying students with iPads, even though the backlog for basic repairs runs into the tens of thousands.

Health Care Issues Loom in Politics, Payments and Quality

The health care industry was unprepared for the presidential victory of Donald J. Trump, and executives at insurance companies and hospital systems are now uncertain what their business is going to look like in the years ahead.

Health shouldn’t be contentious. But it’s incredibly polarizing

The more aware we are of health issues, the more partisan we grow in our thinking about them.

How Your Doctor's Politics Affects Your Health Care -- And What You Can Do About It

Does your doctor’s politics affect his or her medical advice? Although I would like to think not, a recent study by Yale researchers Eitan Hersh and Matthew Goldenberg has shown the opposite.

Money Is the Root of All Political Inequity (and You Should Stop Paying Into It)

While the U.S. is a democracy in some respects, when it comes to policy, a recent study shows that politicos do the bidding of the rich and pretty much ignore the rest of us. He who pays the piper calls the tune, right?

Money, Politics, and Health Care: A Disease-Creation Economy – Part I

Money in politics is making our nation sicker, threatening our national security, and ultimately destroying the very economic prosperity the “money in politics” seeks to achieve.

Politicians are 100% wrong on health care

The only way to lower costs is to make doctors and hospitals charge everyone the same price.

Role of politics in understanding complex, messy health systems

Rather than exclude politics from health, David Hunter argues that we must embrace it if we are to improve our complex health systems.

Take politics out of health care before reforming it

For most Americans, few issues are as visceral and ubiquitous as health care. Voters tend to focus more on the immediate events in their lives, like hospital bills and treatment plans or affording chemotherapy for our mothers and prescription drugs for our fathers.

The Intersection Of Healthcare And Politics

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, politics and healthcare have taken center stage in a national discussion. Some have considered the ACA government intrusion; others find it to be necessary reform to achieve better population health. Yet this fusion of politics and healthcare is nothing new. The federal and state governments have been involved in healthcare since the founding of our country.

The politics and policy of racism in American health care

Lest we think that all that racism stuff is behind us, let’s consider the present. Race rears its head in nearly every nook and cranny of the contemporary health policy landscape. Public opinion on the Affordable Care Act is profoundly racialized, in part because race-based evaluations of President Obama have “spilled over” into the arena of health care.

The Politics Of Health Reform: Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good Plans?

The need for comprehensive reform is clearly compelling. Many believe that the status quo is no longer sustainable and that business as usual in health policy is not an option. But the resilience of the status quo in U.S. medical care should not be underestimated.

The politics of health: a clear-eyed account of inequality and the NHS

This is further proof that health has little to do with health care and everything to do with the politics of social support and welfare. The politics of this was clearly shown by the American right’s fanatical resistance to “Obamacare”. The ideology behind this opposition is that we are free to choose how we live and therefore that what happens to us is morally deserved and also (the old Cartesian dualism) that mind and matter are separate entities.

Trump doesn't have a big, beautiful health plan; Obamacare works and needs a public option

A government-run plan would provide competition to private insurers and guarantee coverage was always available to Americans.

Why Donald Trump Is Good for America

As a diagnostic tool for the health of the American political system, Candidate Trump is just what the doctor ordered.

Health care workers need to engage on politics. It's the only way to fix mounting problems

Health workers are watching bad politics destroy health care, but we can’t solve these problems in exam rooms. We need to solve them at the ballot box.

Either Trump or Biden Will Win. But Our Deepest Problems Will Remain.

For politics to function, we need to act at the local, personal level.

What Biden's Election Means For U.S. Health Care And Public Health

Here's a guide to his policy platforms and promises related to health care. Again, how much he's able to deliver on will in some cases depend on what happens in the Senate.