Anecdotes on Health Care are Compelling, but Are they Useful?
Welcome to this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. This week we will look at one article in particular that I found interesting. It comes to us from the Associated Press and is entitled, "Advocates are back with real health care stories." I like using stories like this because, in covering health insurance and health care, often smaller stories of individuals are lost in the larger stories about policy and what not, so I think it's good to tighten the focus once in a while to the individuals for whom these policy changes will effect.
This article not only looks at the anecdotes that advocates share, but how effective advocacy is -- or isn't -- in actually affecting policy change. The story starts with the anecdote of Greg Douglass, who has used YouTube -- along with thousands of others -- to tell their specific health care and health insurance stories in the hope of bringing about change. People on both sides of the issue are using such videos to affect policy. However, as Devon Herrick of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis said, "We can't have policy by anecdote."
The article mentions how, back in 1993, Families USA started a story bank in which thousands of people told their health insurance horror stories in the hopes of bringing about policy change. However, they all couldn't compete with the fictional couple, Harry and Louise, who raised enough fear and doubt through their own ads to help put down policy change at the time.
Advocates say that this time will be different, and the same groups believe this time, real people will be more effective than actors. They're putting millions of dollars into new ads and videos showing the stories of real people and their health care and health insurance issues.
Overall, like with anything right now, time will tell if any of this is effective. Right now there's so much back and forth on this issue that one can't surmise that any change will happen soon. We can stay hopeful, though.
