Washington Post's "Salon" Disaster and Health Care Reform

As a former citizen of the Washington Post newsroom, the recentdisaster about the newspaper's "salon" project is heartbreaking and embarrassing.

I won't belabor the issues many others have so thoroughly covered, including today's "apology" by publisher Katharine Weymouth, which feels a bit short of fulsome.

Instead I want to point out something that's gotten lost in the media frenzy: that the topic of the first "salon" [sorry, I find I have to use quotes when referring to that] was to be health care reform.

As an independent journalist and participant in the "health 2.0" movement, I find this particularly distressing.

The fact that Weymouth and her team identified health care reform as the first ripe target for a scheme to bring together "the powerful few": CEOs, lobbyists, "Congressional and Administration officials" and Washington Post health care reporting and editorial staff" demonstrates the peril faced by the group with the biggest stake in health care reform.

I refer, of course, to patients.

Significantly, Weymouth did not invite to her "salon" anybody living with a chronic disease, or someone who lost her health insurance when she lost her job, or anyone who has declared bankruptcy under the burden of paying for a loved one's brain surgery.

Now I suppose the patient community could have raised $25,000 to sponsor the event and buy a seat at the table. [We could have all chipped in for some nice clothes and a haircut, so our rep could fit right in.]

Imagine how the conversation would have been different if that patient advocate had co-sponsored the meeting of members of Congress and Administration officials, to say nothing of the top leaders in the Washington Post newsroom!

A fatuous fantasy, I know, laughable on its face.

But it illustrates how once again that despite what appear to be sincere efforts to introduce patient-centric health care reform by some members of Congress and the Administration, the very people who are the ultimate beneficiaries or victims of health care reform are offered no seat at the table.

Not even Katharine Weymouth's dinner table.

Three weeks ago, a number of other "stakeholders" in health care reform created something called a Declaration of Health Data Rights, a statement that spells out what rights patients have to the electronic information about their care to be gathered as part of any health care reform plan. [Interest revealed: I signed onto it and agreed to blog on it as part of a publicity campaign.]

As I've argued previously, things like the Declaration are necessary because patients don't really have access to the process when the difficult, ethically complicated, legally messy and often sneaky and malicious work of making health care law takes place.

There are many reasons to be disgusted with the Washington Post's salon misadventure.

The fact that it demonstrated a reflexive Washington habit of gathering an exclusive cabal of the most powerful and moneyed interests to discuss such an important issue may be the most disgusting of all.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Patients are going to have to force themselves into this debate against the resistance and indifference of the Washington establishment. Patients cannot afford the luxury of deference and e-mail.

And so I repeat the rallying cry: Patients: Aux barricades!

Follow Craig Stoltz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/craigstoltz

Comments

[1samadams]

All options are on the table, we had be ready to speak loudly AND carry a big stick AND be willing to use it to get past the sclerotic necrosis infecting politicians' gray matter.

Also, folks, normal everyday folks, had best quit whining so much about what we can't do, how we can't compete and actually get off their duffs and try to do something for themselves. Look up your reps and senators, state and federal, save their numbers in your cell.

Sitting at a red light in the car - call 'em
Taking the railtrainbus - call 'em or email 'em
Sitting down at your computer after dinner, draft an email, save it, copypaste it send it, repeat

Hold yourself and your ELECTED officials not just for the vote you cast but also remember, they serve US, not the other way around.

Above all - keep it short, to the point and impersonal no matter HOW angry you are.

Just. Do. It.

[Billl]

People can not compete with an army of well funded lobbyists.

Private insurance systems can not compete with government’s ability to provide low cost funding to pay for health care, a national sales tax would be the best source, nor can private hospitals and care facilities compete with government owned facilities staffed by government employed doctors and health care providers to provide high quality low cost care and medications.

It would not be a level playing field if government were competing against private insurance and for profit care providers for delivering low cost health, nor should we care.

A dual public/private choice health care reform system in which all government funded programs would be distributed free, to everyone wanting public care, through government hospitals and clinics could control costs and outcomes to save hundreds of billions of dollars annually from the $2.5trillion now spent, and no one would be left behind without care, nor would seniors, Medicare and Medicaid recipients suffer from the Presidents proposals to cut $600billion in spending over the next ten years in order to pay for his convoluted forced insurance health care plan.

In the public sales tax funded plan:
Every individual who wants free public care and medications should have it period.

Every business one truck plumber or General Motors who selects public care for their employees should have no obligations financial or otherwise to be involved in health care.

[Frank Dwyer - Huffpost Blogger]

There ought to be a prize for any pundit who uses "fulsome" correctly.

"Fulsome: Distastefully excessively in an oily or insincere way: a fulsome compliment."

It doesn't mean "full."

[Frank Dwyer - Huffpost Blogger]

Should read: "Distastefully excessive..." Sorry, distracted by kittens.