By Scott Burris
Last week, Northeastern University’s effort to convene a much-needed conference on the future of health policy was a casualty of the successful manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. One hardly wants to make too much of a stymied conference given all the human damage of the bombing and its aftermath, but all of us who had gathered for the meeting regretted that we would not hear from the panelists, and sympathized with organizers who had put so much into planning it. In recognition of that, I am summarizing here what I planned to say there. It is a tale of two polities that seem to compete for existence in our perceptions of the politics of public health.
One public health is incredibly popular with citizens and lawmakers alike – demonstrated by polling and passage of legislation. I’ve recently blogged on this here. The other public health is the despised nanny state, big government, the sequestered and slashed-to-the bone struggling provider of essential services that don’t get no respect and don’t deserve the meager tax dollars we still pay in. We see this in budget cuts, in hyperbolic allegations of “corruption,” and in disingenuous advocacy for a radical caveat emptor regime for all legal products.
What do we make of these two radically different views of where public health now stands in the public’s regard? My claim is that the former is largely the truth – public health is popular, not despised – but the latter view is what is driving budgets and a lot of policy. The action points follow: a sustained fight to mobilize public support and win more battles over budgets and laws. I see three main strands of work:
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