Telling a Good Systems Story

Overview and Purpose: When we think about health care stories, we usually mean individual stories. We also tell stories about whole systems. A good explanation of a major public issue has the elements of a good story. This document provides guidance on how to tell a good story about our BadgerCare Public Option bill, and health care policy generally.  

Elements of Good Health Care System System Stories:

1. Antagonists (i.e. villains): A good deal of policy talk lacks clear antagonists, which is why it does not engage our emotions and inspire action. Often causes are abstract and lack human actions. Like superhero movies or a good stream series, effective health care system stories need villains. The elements we need are: 1) The people causing the problem. This can be a kind of corporation, like health insurance companies, and it also can be specific people, like a CEO; 2) Some sense of the villain’s motivation, usually in this case greed for windfall profits.  We have great villains in health care, the health insurance corporations, Big Pharma, and the big hospital chains, we need to make them part of our stories.|
2. Protagonists (heroes and victims): the victims are the people harmed, just as there are always people injured or killed by the supervillains that superheroes oppose. The heroes in a systems story are not superheroes, but the people who organize together to defeat our villains. As organizers you are offering people the opportunity to become heroes in the drama.
3. Moral Emotions. Stories that inspire people to action need to not only make a strong argument, they need to spark our moral emotions. (Moral emotions are about what is right and wrong, not only a person’s individual self interest). When telling our systems stories, we need to be attuned to what emotions we are trying to invoke in our audience (the people we are organizing). Most Americans think health care is a right.
   The emotional dimension of that is that we are being denied a fundamental freedom when it is withheld or denied. The emotion people experience when they believe freedom is being denied is one of physical restraint, like one is being held down from doing what they want and they need to do. We see this in conservative rhetoric that effectively triggers the fear that one’s guns will be “taken away” by the government. We need to trigger a similar moral emotion in health care. This means being clear about who is taking it away (the health care industry actors we are targeting) and using strong emotional language about health care being taken away.  This is a general moral emotion beyond ourselves. We can be equally triggered by stories of others having health care taken away by the health care industry, such as the denial of health care for people with preexisting conditions.
4. Our power. Superheroes of course have super powers. Lacking these, our health care system story needs to be clear that we can defeat our antagonists. Our powers are organized people together (our heroes) and the policies they wield (in this case, the BadgerCare Public Option). We need to be both clear and simple in how it will work. The Public Option takes the power away from the health care industry to name the price and deny claims, shifting it to us by setting a fair price and covering all medical care.
5. Concrete and emotive words. Progressives and elected Democrats often avoid strong and emotive words, which is a mistake not made by our opponents. Here are some examples.
   1. Emotive Words to describe health care industry antagonists. Words to describe their motives are best, but it’s also good to describe their impact: greed, profit motive, selfish  thirst for windfall profits, excessive profits, price gouging, grasping, corporate bureaucracy, red tape, endanger, kill (in extreme cases), waste, corrupt, abuse of power, cheat, steal, etc.
   2. Emotive Words on what they do to people who need health care: take away, deny, strip, refuse, turn down, withhold, exclude, spurn, restrain, deny claims, discriminate, impose, destructive, damage.
   3. Positive Words to describe our policy: secure, guarantee, assure, protect, care for, control (as in control own health care decisions), provide, freedom from fear, safety
      
6. Opposition narrative. Our opposition is so poorly positioned on health care they try to steal our frame. Tapping into the deep public desire to control their own health care decision, they foment fear that an alternative enemy, the government, will take control away from average people. This is an attempt to steal our health care freedom narrative. This is easy to address for us when we make clear that the threat to our control is the big health insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the big hospitals. The anti-corporate populist narrative defeats their anti-government narrative of we make the case with appropriate emotion and passion, but only if we are clear and trigger their emotions about claims denials, surprise medical bills, discrimination based on preexisting conditions, prescription drug price gouging, etc..