Michael Joyce is a multimedia producer with HealthNewsReview.org. He tweets as @mlmjoyce.
Former Senator Dave Durenberger
One week after the inauguration of President Donald Trump I sat down with one of the most knowledgeable politicians regarding health care to serve in the US Senate over the past half century.
Dave Durenberger served as a Republican senator for Minnesota from 1978 to 1995. He was frequently labeled as either a “moderate” or “progressive” and is the only Republican senator from Minnesota to serve three terms. He was a chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence as well as the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee. He’s also a former chair of the National Institute on Health Policy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
But through the years — much like his contemporary Senator Ted Kennedy — Durenberger became best known for his intrepid commitment to healthcare reform. Like Kennedy, he also has endured his share of scandal. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to misuse of public funds and asked for (and got) the unanimous censure of his colleagues.
Now, at age 82, Durenberger continues to be sought out for his counsel on healthcare reform. I suspect it’s not just his wisdom people are after, but also his candor and passion, which are in full display in this video interview recorded in his living room in St. Paul on January 26, 2017.
Of note, at three points in the video, you’ll hear Senator Durenberger refer to “Gary.” He’s referring to our publisher, Gary Schwitzer, who has known Durenberger for about 15 years. HealthNewsReview.org will be 11 years old this spring, and the Senator has been a follower of our progress since we began. He and Gary have exchanged ideas regularly about health policy issues and about journalism.
In this excerpt from the full interview, Durenberger touches on the unique challenges the media face when tackling healthcare reform.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
In researching this @bopinon column on medical misinformation, I reached @garyschwitzer who said the information pollution problem goes back to the 1980s, when PR people started tempting reporters with easy, uplifting, prepackaged hype.
https://t.co/ch8rz2MqY4
https://t.co/4AeZZXNhiE
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like