health care vs. healthcare

I used to write papers until the last possible second before they were due, which didn't really leave much time for editing.  It wasn't until one of my college professors, on the last paper I wrote as a college student, said something like, "You should be spending more time editing your papers at this stage of your academic career.  A-"  That fundamentally changed the way I wrote papers from that point forward.

I became a stickler for punctuation.  I am very careful about proper pronoun usage.  I used "and" sparingly and became a more concise writer (research papers...not letters or notes to people...haha).  I am obsessed with the correct usage of hyphens.  And I spend a great deal of time wondering if two words should be one word instead.  My biggest pet peeve is the improper usage of "myself"...oh, don't even get me started.


Maybe some of you fellow nerds would appreciate this blog post from The Health Care Blog as much as I did.

Michael Millenson writes:
The two-word rule for “health care” is followed by major news organizations (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal) and medical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine). Their decision seems consistent with the way most references to the word “care” are handled.

Even the editorial writers of Modern Healthcare magazine do not inveigh against errors in medical care driving up costs in acutecare hospitals and nursinghomes. They write about “medical care,” “acute care” and “nursing homes,” separating the adjectives from the nouns they modify. Some in the general media go even farther, applying the traditional rule of hyphenating adjectival phrases; hence, “health-care reform,” just as you’d write “general-interest magazine” or “old-fashioned editor.”


Most importantly of all, the Associated Press decrees that the correct usage is, “health care.” That decision is not substantive – there is absolutely no definitional difference between “health care” and “healthcare,” despite what you might read elsewhere — but stylistic. As in The Associated Press Stylebook.


I have a fascination for proper grammar because I love rules.  Haha.  Rules provide structure.  It's like a straight line from A to B.  Or "if this, then that."  Rules help me set expectations.  Rules provide cues in social situations.  I used to think that rules offered a certain level of certainty in life.  Hahaha, even I can't keep a straight face writing that sentence.  My Hong Kong experience thus far has already burst that bubble of mine.  Life isn't simply left or right, black or white, yes or no.  Not everything can be labeled and placed neatly into subcategories (I googled to see if this should be hyphened).  The harder I try to define everything, the more difficult I make my life.  It has taken me a really long time to accept that following rules will not shield me from uncertainty...or disappointments.

I'm giving myself permission to just go with the flow.  Maybe even break a few rules.  The earth will not open up and swallow me whole.  (Right...?  lol)

Time to get back to working on slides for the healthcare financing lecture.