The Good and the Bad

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-pollack/no-vaccines-arent-behind-_b_89305.html

Harold Pollack was mentioned by name by Trudy Lieberman during her speech. It was in reference to the coverage in the media about "Obama Care".  According to Lieberman, Pollack has said somewhere that the coverage for Obama Care was 'the best ever'.

Her response to this was that we need to be 'careful of what we mean by good coverage'.

As an example of what I would consider good coverage of health care in the media, I would like to refer to a blog written by Pollack for the Huffington Post dealing with the belief that there is a link between vaccinations and Autism.

"Harold Pollack is Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration, and Faculty Chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago."

I like how early on he mentions how there are four million children born in America each year and that most of them will benefit from vacines. I also like that he mentions right after this that for some, vaccines are a problem.

He talks about the imperfect science behind vaccines, as well as warning of the dangers of spreading false information.

I also like that he posts links to reliable scientific data on the problem.

In his blog he talks about how there is no scientific data to support the link between autism and vaccines.

Later in the blog he shows evidence of a very real link between outbreaks of meazels amongst children who have not been vaccinated.

The numbers provided in this example are given in context, making them meaningful.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/18/jeremy-hunt-elderly-care-asia

For my example of what I think isn't very good coverage of a health care issue I am citing this article from the Guardian which talks about the care of the elderly.

This article was written by Hans Schattle and it discusses how Jeremy Hunt is trying to encourage England to adopt a system for treating the elderly that is more like the system in Asia.

Having lived in one of the countries he mentions I have to admit there is some truth when he says that fewer and fewer people in Korea are tolerating living with their elderly relatives and that these elderly relatives are in trouble because many of them didn't have a pension, or had an insufficient pension. (the idea of a pension is a relatively new concept in this country - many elder people are forced to retire and then they work for themselves selling vegetables in the street)

The big problem with this is he doesn't give it any context and therefore it's hard to judge how much weight there is to this side of the argument.

The same is true when he says how there are three times as many elderly people who live in poverty. What does this mean? The way he puts it, it sounds like a lot, but since there are no numbers to back it up, it doesn't have a lot of weight.

He says that in Asia the younger generations are less willing to take care of the elderly. My question to him would be, less willing than what?

Since I don't know what it is being compared to, its hard for me to draw a conclusion as to what type of change has occurred, and truly how significant it is.