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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Did y'all talk about this story by Aaron Sibarium earlier this month?

Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote

The article starts by describing a psychiatric institute in Pennsylvania that started an initiative to register voters.

Located in a swing state that could decide the 2024 election, the hospital asks psychiatric inpatients, regardless of diagnosis, if they would be interested in "voter registration tools" that let them check their nearest polling station and register to vote online. Patients can also request a mail-in ballot with "assistance" from hospital staff, according to a pair of papers about the project, which began in 2020.

...as the institute puts it, [voting] is a "therapeutic tool" that "helps empower patients and makes them feel good."

"Voting is an important part of the recovery process," Julie Graziane, a geriatric psychiatrist

Since the initiative is in a medical institution it must be justified, because you can't just waltz into medicine and decide voting is important. No, these institutes are bound to a sacred oath that commits their staff to the health of patients. By necessity, voting must become good for patients.

After the starting the voter registration initiative, the Pennsylvania hospital "has turned to the nonprofit Vot-ER, which develops "nonpartisan civic engagement tools" for "every corner of the healthcare system." This is where my lack of strong objection turns into a fully committed objection.

Founded by an emergency room physician at Harvard Medical School, Alister Martin, who served as an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, Vot-ER has helped more than 50,000 doctors register their patients to vote. Vot-ER claims to be nonpartisan, it is staffed by progressive operatives, funded by progressive foundations, and run by an umbrella nonprofit, A Healthier Democracy, that has referred to DEI as "the bedrock of fair healthcare." And ahead of the 2024 election, it is leading a movement—backed by top medical groups and an executive order from the Biden-Harris administration

The basic gist is that medical staff wear a QR code around their neck and point patients to it in order to register. A 2021 executive order encouraged this behavior, but Vot-ER's site only cites the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in its FAQ page as its legal reason to exist. Medical professionals have the greenlight to seek out patients and proactively attempt to register them to vote.

I did not vet every link in the article, but I did look at a few, and as far as I can tell most of the quotes are presented in a fair enough, if biased, context. There are professionals willing to say stuff like these bits:

Debra Koss, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Rutgers... described a patient who, depressed by the poor conditions in her Section 8 apartment building, gained an "internal locus of control" by registering to vote. "Ultimately, she became less anxious and depressed," the doctors wrote in an op-ed last year, "and for the first time in 15 years, her intrusive suicidal thoughts ceased to exist."

I think if voting cures depression that's great, but I suspect voting does not cure depression and Debra Koss is not offering a medical opinion.

At the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Graziane, the geriatric psychiatrist, has argued that voting can "increase life satisfaction, decrease risky behaviors and increase mental wellbeing."

Their argument echoed what [the founder of Vote-ER] told the New York Times in a 2020 interview... The time for doctors "being impartial and apolitical," he said, "is over."

I watched most of a 20 minute talk from the founder of Vot-ER from 2023. It was very heavy on the voting aspect, the benefits of voting, and the benefit of voter registration. Not so much attention given to the medical aspect, ethical questions, or potential impacts. I briefly trolled through Vot-ER's site and, as far as I could tell, they don't provide any studies supporting the idea their program has significant positive medical benefits to patients. Which I would have figured would be necessary. If a doctor is doing something to me as a doctor it should improving my health.

If a person comes in with a broken arm and you offer to register them to vote on their way out I think this carries ethical questions but, fine, whatever. When the program extends to mental health institutions and picks up a motto of Voting Is Great For You Actually Because Anecdote this seems like it should be made an issue.

I'm no expert, but I am not under the impression that dedicating more attention to politics is the best path to a healthy mental state. I am under the impression that politics, particularly of the national sort, in this day and age appears to degrade many people's mental well being. Encouraging people to vote is not necessarily damaging to their psyche, but a focus on voting might be a gateway drug. An organization, staffed by party operatives or affiliates, pushing a political non-profits goals onto medical staff in hospitals is wrong.

Like ballot harvesting I think it's sleazy. I can accept sleaziness in politics. People accept that politics is not holy and sacred, but dirty. Importing it into medicine, which I know is not new, seems particularly bad though. Initiatives like this drives resentment when, on the other hand, I am inundated by messaging that claims one party is holy, good, and joyous democracy lovers-- while this party engages in what appears to be deeply cynical, irreverent electioneering. I guess I'll accept sleazy politics in medicine as well.

Time to kill some of my opsec. I have personally argued with Deb Koss at a conference in D.C. telling her to cut this shit out.

I won't say much about it but she (and others like her are) exactly as you'd expect.

It's not as worrying in the disciplines like Psych (hers), ID, and Peds where people are overwhelmingly left leaning but these advocacy people are still DEMANDING trainees participate in advocacy and politics (and it's always one specific kind of advocacy). Trainees who can't say no without negatively impacting their careers. It's gross and deeply unethical.

Furthermore these idiots seem fundamentally incapable of understanding how damaging this is to the long term health of the profession.

It's no different than any woke ideological capture but with a very damaging set up levers (ensuring incoming medical students are very left leaning, brainwashing them during vulnerable periods like residency, and mandating leftist political advocacy as part of educational curricula).

I hate it.

These pediatricians committing themselves to lefty advocacy understand that right wingers are the ones having babies and you do need to get parents to trust you to do your job?

Like normiecons used to never skip shots. Now my coworkers who only go to church when they're on call(widely believed that you can't be compelled to leave church early to go to work. I have no idea as to the accuracy of that belief per employment law but managers mostly respect it.) discuss it openly. The deep red tribe loss of trust in institutions is mostly from actions of those institutions that they can point to and it's driving radicalism and there is no outreach to these people to try to rebuild that trust. Just spinning bullshit to call us evil.

Yup, when I started working the only anti-vaxxers were hippies, woo-moms, and low income blacks.* Now it is a mix of everybody.

Also the left hates doctors because they hate people who make money, now the right also hates us for lockdowns and political advocacy. Both sides are fucking doctors but it's impossible to have a discussion about this with most of my colleagues.

*Well and nurses are anti flu shot for reasons I have never really been able to get.

Knowing a few nurses, there's a bunch of them that are anti-flu shot because it's an annual PITA with Christmas-level season creep and doesn't really have the efficacy to justify its hype.

I get the "I don't want to put in the effort to go get it" but I've seen them like actively hide from the roving flu shot team like children hiding under a desk. Sit still for 15 seconds and move on with your life for fucks sake.

I think it's the principle of it being an incredibly annoying theatrical production for a vaccine with so-so efficacy. Not saying nurses shouldn't get flu shots, obviously, but relentless overhyping gets irritating fast.

Most people get mild side effects if any and while the efficacy is low people in healthcare get the treat of watching people actually die from the flu (which is why most doctors seem to not give a shit).

Nurses are crazy though so....sigh.

Again, not saying it’s a rational decision as much as a bunch of women who feel put-upon(rationally or not) and overrate their own importance throwing a fit about a predictable annual annoyance.

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