Please welcome today’s guest writer, Lauren Bloem. Lauren graduated from Calvin in 2013 with a degree in psychology, and this month she earned her masters in public policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Jeff.
As we jump into budget and healthcare crazy in our country, I want to introduce you to two lenses: sympathy and empathy. You’re probably looking through one or the other whether you realize it or not.
Lens #1: Meet sympathy. Sympathy looks at another person’s situation and feels bad. It is grateful that’s not them. Sympathy comes with feelings, for sure, but those feelings are projected outwards at another person, community, country, or situation.
Sympathy asks the question: “Why are you in such a needy situation?” Notice there is clearly a “me” and a “you.” When we ask questions out of sympathy, often times, the resulting action is to ameliorate our own bad feelings. Maybe our actions do not have the beneficiary’s best interest in mind.
Lens #2: Meet empathy. Empathy looks at another person’s situation and says, “That could be me.” Empathy comes with feelings, and also acts to create a situation that would be acceptable were the roles reversed.
Empathy asks the question: “Why is our situation unjust or unfair, and what can we do to fix that?” Notice that any “me” and “you” divide is broken down here. It starts with an understanding that I could have been you, and you could have been me.
These lenses are really helpful as our country enters into discussions on healthcare, budget, immigration, and more. Let me apply these lenses to one part of the healthcare debate, and you’ll see.
The House recently passed the American Health Care Reform Act. It relied on “high risk pools” to lower premiums for some people. Premiums are the amount you have to pay, per month, to access health insurance when you need it. Pooling all those people with “high risk” health issues (i.e. preexisting conditions, people with cancer, diabetes, MS, and more) into their own insurance pool does lower the average cost for healthcare for everyone else not in a “high risk pool.” Instead, the people with higher healthcare costs pay higher premiums. It’s “fair” since you get what you pay for. It’s not “equitable” since those with the worst health conditions may not have the resources to pay for them. Since the pool is small, the costs are way, way higher. The rest of the country, those without any current major health costs, all pay lower premiums.
Sympathy wonders, “What happened to you, to have such terrible healthcare problems?” Sympathy feels bad for the people in the high risk pool. It might even raise funds to give to those people in the high risk pool.
Empathy wonders, “What can we do to lower healthcare costs for us?” Empathy knows that the system will be in place into the future, when any one of us might have cancer or diabetes. It looks to make structural changes, so if anyone gets terribly sick, the risk is spread across more people to make it more affordable.
While we have these conversations as a nation, let’s ask: are we looking through the sympathy lens or the empathy lens? Everyone has a lens whether they advertise it clearly or not.
In this partisan landscape, consider who is giving you information, and take that into consideration. Nobody—not one party, not one person—commands all truth. There are a lot of really good sources from people who try to take the facts and make sense of it. If you look at enough opinions and angles, you’ll get closer to the truth.
