Cries of crisis : rethinking the health care debate / Robert B. Hackey.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Since the late 1960s, health care in the United States has been described as a system in crisis. No matter their position, those seeking to improve the system have relied on the rhetoric of crisis to build support for their preferred remedies, to the point where the language and imagery of a health care crisis are now deeply embedded in contemporary politics and popular culture.

In Cries of Crisis , Robert B. Hackey analyzes media coverage, political speeches, films, and television shows to demonstrate the role that language and symbolism have played in framing the health care debate, shaping policy making, and influencing public perceptions of problems in the health care system. He demonstrates that the idea of crisis now means so many different things to so many different groups that it has ceased to have any shared meaning at all. He argues that the ceaseless talk of "crisis," without a commonly accepted definition of that term, has actually impeded efforts to diagnose and treat the chronic problems plaguing the American health care system. Instead, he contends, reformers must embrace a new rhetorical strategy that links proposals to improve the system with deeply held American values like equality and fairness.

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CHOICE Review

Hackey (health policy and management, Providence College) contends that using the word "crisis" to describe America's health care system is misleading, in that the various aspects of this crisis--the cost of health care, malpractice insurance costs, the nursing shortage, and the "uninsured"--are not recent issues but go back decades, if not generations. Nursing shortages date to the 1940s, and the "malpractice crisis" is not credible when the cost of litigation is considered. The rhetoric of crisis, he suggests, undermines the credibility of those advocating reform. Hackey skillfully uses political rhetoric as well as references to popular culture to discuss how the health care crisis is presented to the public. Hackey believes that America's skepticism toward the government's ability to end the crisis is part of the problem. The government's inability to address these problems over the years, as well as its failure to solve other problems, is responsible for American skepticism of government efforts. Developing a new rhetoric, as well as convincing the American people that the government can address what have become chronic problems, are the challenges facing those who want to reform the health care system. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, and graduate students. J. F. Kraus Wagner College