Dr. Peter J. Weiss

What’s in a name? The 112^th Con­gress comes back in ses­sion tomor­row and one of the first items on their agenda is reform of health­care reform.

Scott Hens­ley served as the found­ing edi­tor of the Wall Street Jour­nal Health Blog, and left the Jour­nal and to join National Pub­lic Radio, where he serves as a dig­i­tal cor­re­spon­dent, edi­tor and main writer on the NPR Health Blog.

Scott Hens­ley of National Pub­lic Radio sug­gests in this blog post that they need to get the name right.  That the bill needs some­thing catch­ier than the “Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act.”

His post can be taken sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways.  Per­haps it’s purely tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be seri­ous.  Or per­haps he really means that names are impor­tant.

That peo­ple respond to some names bet­ter than oth­ers.  That Con­gress is sell­ing a prod­uct and that one of the prin­ci­ples of sell­ing is to get the name right.  That’s what I think he meant.

But I’d like to sug­gest the Con­gress get the name right for another rea­son.  The name is impor­tant to the process.  The title of a bill can help shape its con­tent and ensure that it achieves its intent.

A good name is like a good mis­sion state­ment — short, focused and mem­o­rable.  A guid­ing title pro­vides a way of test­ing the draft bill’s pro­vi­sions.

Are they in sync with the name?  Will the each of the indi­vid­ual pro­vi­sions really help achieve the bill’s pur­pose?

With that in mind per­haps we can con­sider some bet­ter names.  How about the “Keep It Sim­ple Act of 2011″ to remind our law­mak­ers that com­plex­ity is a big part of our prob­lem and we must sim­plify?

Or how about the “Band-Aid Act of 2011″ if they don’t want to fix any prob­lems but just post­pone the hard deci­sions?  Or to help them under­stand that more health­care isn’t our answer, per­haps we should see the “When You’re in a Hole Stop Dig­ging Act of 2011.”

Obvi­ously I’m just jok­ing around with these sug­ges­tions.

But let’s be seri­ous.  Imag­ine that a for­ward think­ing con­gressper­son intro­duced a draft bill titled the “More Health, Less Care Act of 2011.”

How would that change the dia­log?  How would that help us think cre­atively about how to not do more of what hasn’t worked in the past?  How would that move us past talk­ing about health­care to talk­ing about health?  What would be the pro­vi­sions of such a bill?

Con­gress, if you’re lis­ten­ing, I’ve got some ideas.