Study Circle Five Main Page

I. Welcome
Coming together and settling in with a brief reading or contemplative activity

Barriers to Reform
•
Reasons for Hope

II. Overview
The American health care system is a patchwork of competing needs, interests and perspectives. What barriers to reform exist? How did these barriers come to be? Why is there reason to believe that they can and will be removed?


III. Group Discussion on Readings


A. Briefly share your experiences in "Allocating the Federal Budget."
  • How did your budget compare with the real one?
  • What surprised you?
  • What questions did this exercise raise in your mind?
  • What did you learn?
B. Based on your readings what do you believe are the major barriers to health care reform?
  1. In the article Paying More but Getting Less, the author disputes five commonly held beliefs about the American health care system. He refers to them as myths. Did his arguments convince you? Why or why not?

  2. In The Logic of the Health Care Debate, the Rockridge Institute presents several distinctly different modes of thought among our population with regard to health care systems. Discuss the key differences between them? Can you see any way that these differences can be bridged?

  3. Comment on the framing continuum identified by the Herndon Alliance in its How We Talk about Health Care chart.

  4. The article What Do Voters Want identifies a number of concerns and values must be acknowledged and honored for any reform bills to pass. To what extent are they barriers to reform?
C. When you look around, what do you see as reasons to hope that change is possible? What groups besides doctors are viewing the problem differently than before? Speak also from your personal experience.

Next Week: Choose next week's facilitator, scribe and timekeeper.