Ten Buzzwords for Health Reform Obfuscation

To obfuscate: always use a metaphor, simile, jargon word, data term,  or management phrase you are used to seeing in print, on the air, tube, or on the web.

Anonymous

October 10, 2012 -  This is for you – all you health reformers out there who seek to redo the system but don’t know how.  The secret is this.  Use words or phrases that convey superior  knowledge and  overarching grasp of health affairs that expose the foibles and self-interests of  individuals  and ordinary humanity.

1.      Meaningful – Always talk of “meaningful” use, abuse, and incentives, for “meaningful” implies only you know what truly matters or where the truth lies.

2.      Accountable – This word is hard to beat, for “accountable” shows you,  as a superior person, for you know how to hold ordinary health system participants  responsible for distracting from and harming the common good.

 

3.      Disruptive – This conveys the impression that what is going on among the health care plebes is too expensive, must be turned on its head,  and replaced with non-specialists.

4.      Gamification – Use this when telling others that everybody is “gaming the system” in their own self-interest. Especially good when pointing at fraud and abuse of federal entitlement programs.

5.      Datafication – There is absolutely nothing in the system that cannot be corrected or controlled  with the use of data on large populations.  In data you trust, all others rely on the foolishness of individuals in the current system.

6.      Interoperability  – No doubt about it.  The health system ought to be interoperable, standardized, homogenized, and interconnected by computers and algorithms. 

7.      Transparency – Once everything is interoperable, everything will be transparent and everybody will know everything about everybody. Privacy and security be damned. You can trust your competitors. Once they know everything about your strategies, they can be trusted to do what needs to be done.

8.      Liar -  If you disapprove or disagree with your adversaries, call them “liars” – full of lies, falsehoods, deceptions,   misinformation,  extremism, inaccuracies, and continuous mendacities. Never be specific.  Be vague. Be  big on broadsides but scant on details.  Stay in the weeds. 

9         Engagement -  Always engage patients. Make the system “patient-centered,” for patients, especially those with pre-existing conditions, have heretofore have been excluded.  

10,      Alignment - Everything and everybody must be aligned, for the non-engaged and non-aligned suffer the consequences of a non-coordinated, freedom, choice  seeking individuals.

Tweet:  If you are seriously interested in reform, but are frustrated , resort to these ten words to advance your cause.