Language conforms the meaning of key ideas and color how people support or oppose an issue. There have been numerous studies done that show that the same people will support or oppose the same issue (first ammendment rights, gun control, abortion) depending which key words have been used.
In the discussion of health care the term 'stakeholders' has been used to refer to those industries that have something to lose if the system changes.
stake⋅hold⋅er /ˈsteɪkˌhoʊldər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation Show IPA
Use stakeholders in a Sentence
–noun 1. the holder of the stakes of a wager.
2. a person or group that has an investment, share, or interest in something, as a business or industry.
3. Law. a person holding money or property to which two or more persons make rival claims.
This shows the commercial bias that public discussion has in the US.
The only people that are stakeholders in the health care system are the consumers, the people who need to see health care professionals for care.
The health care providers, the insurance industry, the hospitals, and the pharmecuetical companies are commercial entities that try to get a return from servicing the true stakeholders.
The big difference between the US and other countries that have approached this question is that we focus on the practicality of an issue, taking into account the interests of 'false' stakeholders, thereby skewing the discussion into trying to maintain the viability of commercial actors that are not true stakeholders.
Other countries, like Canada and England were able to establish a moral concensus, that clearly established that universal health care is a right and with a clear understanding of who the true stakeholders in the system really are, evolved systems that met the moral question.
Ironically they also turned out to be more efficient and still profitable for many in the system outside of the Insurance companies. In a sense Insurance companies are not stakeholders (they have zero stake in the health of the consumers) in the traditional understanding of the word (see #2 in definition above) but are speculators in a bet (see #1 definition above).
The inability of the United States to have a clear moral discussion and conconsensus on the moral imperative of universal health care turns the words and the discussion upside down.
People are the only stakeholders in a health care system. Society has a stake in ensuring universal care. Everything should be worked back from that premise.
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