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Health Chatter
Health and Politics
Do you think we, I mean, we could even ask ourselves, do we know what we should expect from government? What do we want from them, it, those entities, as far as our health is concerned? And then, so that's question one. Question two is trust. Where does trust fit into all of this?
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Health and Politics
Again, if you reflect on what we did during the COVID pandemic at its height, I think that a lot of people all of a sudden expected certain things. just out of the gate. They expected it because they didn't know what to do. And so there was this expectation and then trust got compromised. And I think that's where politics and the politicians got involved in all of it.
Health Chatter
Health and Politics
And it created communication problems that created confusion, et cetera. So I don't know, Clarence, what do you think? What should we expect?
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Health and Politics
So today, Clarence, you and I are going to talk about the politics of health. around health. And, you know, I can, I can start this out. You know, I, I work for the state of Minnesota and, um, you know, there's things that happen at the state level. There's things that happen at the local county levels. There's obviously things that happen at the, um, at the federal level.
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Health and Politics
All right. So let me dig deeper on that one. As far as access, access to what specifically? For instance, when we're talking about access to care, then we're talking about linking that with insurance. Okay. And the government, you know, there's only limited access. government-oriented health care insurance. So, I mean, you know, all right, Medicare being one, let's just talk that for a second.
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Health and Politics
But government isn't really involved with private health insurance.
Health Chatter
Health and Politics
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. We're all hoping that you're having a great summer and staying cool. There's a lot of heat going on around the country. So we're hoping that everybody is staying safe. We've got a great show today, just with three of us from the Health Chatter team. And we're going to be talking about politics and its effects on health. And I assume
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Health and Politics
And, um, as I think about it, um, I recognized, and as I reflect on it, I recognize that people in general, I don't think are really aware of what happens at each of those different levels of government. You know, the politics of it we'll get to in a second.
Health Chatter
Health and Politics
I think that government provides some policy-oriented political oversight a little bit for these health plans in general, but limited. limited because these are private agencies or private companies but here's here's a real problem that that that i see i think there's so much confusion out there and if we had
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a single payer system, you know, again, politics, government, et cetera, but put that aside for a second. If we had a single payer system, Clarence, do you think that that would help as far as making things easier as far as access, as far as understanding? In other words, I don't have to sit and navigate, you know,
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10 different health plans in order to figure out which is, this is the health plan that I have done. Okay.
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I think on a previous show, I had mentioned that the symbol of medicine is you know, is the, you know, with the serpent and, and the actually in the staff and the staff represents the traveling nature of a physician. And, you know, we grew up with that.
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Health and Politics
You know, it's like, I remember as a kid having asthma and, you know, my, you know, a doc would cut, you know, my pediatrician would come to the house and, and treat me at the house. You don't see that anymore.
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Health and Politics
But certainly, you know, all right, if you were going to just talk to somebody on the street and ask them, do you know what your state health department does? Or do you know what your local health department does? Do you know what your federal government does? I don't think people have a clue. What do you think about that?
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Health and Politics
You know, you bring up a good point. You have to have good representation to help people. Yeah. But not everybody has to navigate per se, you know, which gets this whole idea of leadership. So, you know, we've got governmental leadership. Like, for instance, we have commissioners of health. We have assistant commissioners at the state and at the local, et cetera.
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We have heads of centers for disease control or what have you. And then you have politicians. Okay. So it's like, how is it that we integrate leadership? so that it can affect health in a positive way. I think that that's central to this whole conversation.
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Health and Politics
Yeah. So, you know, we're coming up into a, well, we're meshed in an election coming up here. And, you know, what kind of message do we, you know, who've been in the healthcare environment, what is it that we want to say to our listening audience when you're dealing with elections In this case, you're dealing with politicians and health.
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Erin, I want to get your insight into this, you know, from a younger generation. Are you there, Erin?
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Yeah. So what do you think about when, you know, when, when you're thinking about electing officials or leaders, what's in your head, Erin?
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factor that we have to make people more aware of yeah yeah and you know i you know um aaron put together some background research i found this really kind of interesting research has suggested that politics we'll talk about politics now may be a significant contributor not only to individual stress but also the physical manifestations of poor mental health
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I have to let it go. So here's another aspect of that story I was telling you about when I was standing in line with that person. We're standing in line to see, ready, the Declaration of Independence.
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Okay. Okay. Wow. And I said, you know, and I said to this woman, I said, well, you know, the government is us. And I said, you will see it in a minute. We, the people.
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Okay. So, but I think, and maybe incorrectly, but I think where we've gotten is that government is on one side of the equation and we, the public, are on the other. And excuse me, the government is us because we elect these people to help us, to represent us. And I think that disconnect is what's hurting us.
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I think a lot of people see the word, consider the word government as maybe overbearing or as negative. And that's unfortunate. So, all right. Barry, last comments on this. I mean, we could go on and on about this, but I think... Oh, by the way, we're going to have... Our next show will be linked with this, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Go ahead, Barry.
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as well as the fracturing of critical social networks, which are at the heart of our mental well-being. And so it's like it says here, the results of the survey suggest that political stress may be more common than many of us expect. And, you know, I think in many ways, this came to the forefront during the COVID pandemic.
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So, you know, last thought for me is I think the issues of politics and health are much more linked today with the concept of power. And whether that's power with our political leaders, if it's power within agencies, if it's power at the state, local levels, et cetera. And I believe that the public doesn't appreciate that. And it gets in the way. I think this is my opinion.
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I think it gets in the way of us moving ahead in a healthy way when there's more power involved with it. And to your point previously, Clarence, you know, power is linked with money and et cetera. And so maybe we need to kind of go back a little bit and do a little bit more reflecting and maybe embrace some things, ideas and concepts that are healthier going forward.
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Health and Politics
So this is a conversation that perhaps we could address after the elections take place. And we could say, okay, we talked about it before the elections. Now, these are the leaders that we have. What implications does this now have going forward. So stay tuned on that. We can take a look at that. So thank you, Barry. Thanks, Aaron. Thanks, Clarence. This is a great conversation.
Health Chatter
Health and Politics
Our next topic for Health Chatter is linked with this, ironically, and we're going to be talking about this whole concept of fake news. So that should be an interesting discussion. So for our listening audience, keep health chatting.
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Health and Politics
pandemic, where maybe from a government perspective, political perspective, health is kind of invisible. Until all of a sudden something comes up. And then it's like, oh, my God.
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Sorry for the technical difficulties. Don't worry about it. What I thought we could do is maybe let's talk a little bit about some federal agencies. And there are a lot of them. But like, for instance, there's a Centers for Disease Control. There's the National Institute of Drug Abuse. There's the National Institute of Health. There's the National Institute of Mental Health.
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All these different manifestations. And then kind of linked with all of it is the Surgeon General of the United States, who's kind of like a... a figurehead, a spokesperson on some of these issues. But again, if you were to ask most people, do you know what the National Institute of Drug Abuse does, NIDA? Yeah. You know what happens to the National Institutes of Health?
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that we probably could do more than one show on this. But anyway, we'll get to that in a sec. We have a great team. I like to recognize them. Maddie Levine-Wolf, Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard, Matthew Campbell, Sheridan Nygaard, Oh, wonderful, wonderful crew. They do our research, our marketing, and also our recording of our shows to get out to you, the listening audience.
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You know, also, I think that there's a lack of understanding of connection. So, for instance, how does the federal health agencies connect, for instance, with state agencies? So to give you a for instance, the center, a lot of them provide research money, research dollars. Like when I was at the state in the cardiovascular arena, we got grants from the Centers for Disease Control.
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It became more... meaningful for people in general when we took those dollars and we did some interventions in the community. Like you and I, Clarence, worked together on some of those things that in the background were funded by the Centers for Disease Control. Again, the public doesn't know that in general. They don't make the connection, but they appreciate
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some of the activities that come out of these research things. Now, those are interventions. Then there's also actual formal research that's done, that's given to universities, et cetera, to do a lot of studies. That money would not be available from states in general. So again, that money, most of that money comes from the federal government.
Health Chatter
Health and Politics
Yeah. And, you know, I think there's confusion, too. Like, for instance, I remember just a quick story. I remember when I was out in D.C. and they were They were considering voting on the Affordable Care Act at the time. And there was a woman, I was standing in line at a museum, and there was this woman who was basically saying, I don't want the government involved in my health.
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Health and Politics
Also, I've got a great colleague, Clarence Jones. He and I do these shows together. It's been really fun and engaging. And I don't know about you, Clarence, but I've learned a lot. as we close in on our 100th show pretty quick. It's been really, really fun. So thank you to you and the crew. Thank you to Human Partnership, who sponsors our Health Chatter podcast.
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Health and Politics
I mean, I just overheard this conversation, right? you know, being who I am, I guess I, you know, I turned around and I could tell that a little bit, a little bit. I turned around and I said, you know, I could tell that this person was a little bit on the older side. And I said, well, do you have Medicare? And she said, well, yeah, for sure.
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Health and Politics
I said, well, that, you know, you just said you don't want government involved in your in your health, does that mean you don't want Medicare? Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I definitely want my Medicare. And so there's like on one hand, you know, the public can say one thing and the other hand, you know, they don't recognize the linkages
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that um some of these programs provide so there's like you know the affordable care act is one there's you know medicare there's medicaid there's you know yeah even you know you can even say social security i mean you know as it links with These are things that people don't want to, on one hand, they'll say, I don't want government involved in my health.
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Health and Politics
On the other hand, they don't want to give up these things that are given to them. So there's that back and forth, I think, that provides the confusion that leads to this confusion.
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Health and Politics
Great community health organization. I recommend that you check them out at humanpartnership.org. And also check us out at the Health Chatter website. You can check us out at healthchatterpodcast.com. And leave some of your insights and your reviews. And also if you have questions, you can put them on our website and we'll get back to you. So thanks to all of you.