This phrase is badly overworked in the British press, in my opinion. According to the OED it means "Influenced or determined by a person's locality or postal address (chiefly with reference to the unequal provision of health care)". Although I agree that it is mainly used regarding health care, it seems also more and more used in all sorts of contexts, such as refuse collection, the price of car parking, and the maintenance or otherwise of speed cameras, to name just three.
Do Americans have an equivalent "zip code lottery" or similar phrase? I suppose that, given the fact that the states have far more autonomy in the USA than the constituent parts of Britain, the concept is less likely to arise.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Do Americans have an equivalent "zip code lottery" or similar phrase?
Not that I've ever heard of. After reading the Wikipedia article, I think it may have something to do with the difficulty of mapping zip codes (which are merely a series of digits) to locales without a reference table of some sort. The UK system with letter and digits seems slightly easier as many of the letters have mnemonic value.
I don't really think it has much to do with mapping codes to specific locations. It's that one particular area (usually much larger than a particular postcode) will be different from another. A prime example is in health care, as already mentioned. Different health care providers will have differing bugetary and other priorities, so a particular expensive drug may be available in certain parts of the country but not in others. The papers will therefore write indignantly about the postcode lottery that means that Mr X may possibly live a couple of months longer than Ms Y, who lives in an area where the drug cannot be prescribed.
I've just read the Wikipedia article, and, although the examples it gives are valid, the use of the phrase by newspapers is much broader, not referring to actual postcodes.This message has been edited. Last edited by: arnie,
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I don't really think it has much to do with mapping codes to specific locations.
OK. I still maintain that we don't have the concept or a similar term. I know (vaguely) that insurance companies track diseases and death and associate them with zip codes, when writing up their actuary tables.
While it isn't highly-advertised here, you can bet that business people are influenced by zip codes. If I ask a banker for a loan, he is more likely to agree if my zip is 90210, in wealthy Beverly Hills, than 02888, working class Warwick.
Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a Northwestern University sociologist and community activist. It describes the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate the area where banks would not invest; later the term was applied to discrimination against a particular group of people (usually by race or sex) no matter the geography. During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. Through at least the 1990s this practice meant that banks would often lend to lower income whites but not to middle or upper income blacks.
Reverse redlining occurs when a lender or insurer particularly targets minority consumers, not to deny them loans or insurance, but rather to charge them more than would be charged to a similarly situated majority consumer.
In 1935, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to look at 239 cities and create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in each surveyed city. Such maps defined many minority neighborhoods in cities as ineligible to receive financing. The maps were based on assumptions about the community, not accurate assessments of an individual's or household's ability to satisfy standard lending criteria.
In the United States, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed to fight the practice. It prohibited redlining when the criteria for redlining are based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 further required banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities. Although open redlining was made illegal in the 70s through community reinvestment legislation, the practice continued in less overt ways., and many allege that the redlining target group has shifted from African Americans to the LGBT community.
Dan Immergluck writes that in 2002 small businesses in black neighborhoods still received fewer loans, even after accounting for business density, business size, industrial mix, neighborhood income, and the credit quality of local businesses
The practice of refusing to serve particular geographical areas because of the race or income of the area's residents.
Example Citation:
"At first, the Federal Housing Administration, the arm of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department that insures lenders 100 percent in foreclosure losses, reacted to racial change on the South Side by redlining. The agency, along with lenders and banks, literally drew red lines on maps of minority neighborhoods and refused to insure loans there." —Alex Rodriguez, "Foreclosures scar Roseland," Chicago Sun-Times , April 5, 1999
OED Online
quote:
The action of red-line v. (in various senses); esp. the action or practice of a bank, etc., in refusing to grant a loan or insurance to an area considered to be of significant financial risk, or offering these services at prohibitively high rates.
1967Wall St. Jrnl. 14 June 16/3 ‘Redlining’. Banks and insurance companies‥literally or figuratively draw red lines on the city map around slum areas, and within those lines mortgage money and insurance‥are made available only at extra-high rates.
1977Listener 9 June 763/1 The policy of so-called ‘red-lining’, that is, drawing a line round certain undesirable areas and refusing to lend money on property within the red line.
1995Guardian 14 Oct. (Outlook section) 33/2 The society, which has 850 mortgage holders in Chapeltown, said that red-lining is not practised when processing a mortgage application.
The papers will therefore write indignantly about the postcode lottery that means that Mr X may possibly live a couple of months longer than Ms Y, who lives in an area where the drug cannot be prescribed.
That sounds odd, arnie. Why can't a drug be delivered in a specific zip code? That definitely isn't the case in the U.S.
The National Health Service is administered by various local "primary care trusts", that run health provision in a particular area. Each of them has its own budget, and sets its own priorities. That can mean that one area can afford to provide a particular drug or treatment, but another may feel it cannot.
The NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)
quote:
... was established in an attempt to defuse the so-called postcode lottery of healthcare in England and Wales, where treatments that were available depended upon the NHS primary care trust area in which the patient happened to live ...
Although it has succeeded to some extent, many of the old practices continue. NICE only covers England and Wales, in any event, so the "postcode lottery" still exists in some cases between someone in England and another in Scotland.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The ones that get publicity are ones for certain cancer relief. I can't remember any names, but they are apparently very expensive and are likely to extend a sufferer's life by only a few months.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'm rather disappointed by the way this phrase has developed. It once had a specific meaning; the way that postcodes, which were developed specifically to deal with the delivery of mail, had come to be used as a method of classification for all sorts of other purposes, so that things like insurance premiums were affected by a household's postcode, and if the Royal Mail happened to reallocate you from one postal area to another it could have a severe effect on your finances.
These days it's used as a rather lazy media shorthand for any service that's affected by where you live; not necessarily by postcode, but local government boundaries, health authority boundaries, whatever. In such cases there's no real "lottery" aspect since the boundaries are fixed, so the whole phrase is pretty inaccurate in my opinion. I'd like to see it used a lot less.This message has been edited. Last edited by: Guy Barry,
The ones that get publicity are ones for certain cancer relief. I can't remember any names, but they are apparently very expensive and are likely to extend a sufferer's life by only a few months.
I am wondering if that is chemotherapy or pain medication. Either, I'd think, would be necessary.
From the last few mentions I recall they are neither. They are drugs that in certain advanced cases tend to slow the progression of the cancer. Slow, but not halt or reverse the progression.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Originally posted by Kalleh: Welcome, Guy! Your perspective is interesting.
Thank you. It's unfortunate that my first post to a language forum contained a rather blatant spelling mistake (which I've corrected now). I assume that you and the other posters were too polite to point it out!
If people around here got all hung up about typos we'd never talk about anything else. Welcome to Wordcraft. I assume the fact that you have actually made a second post means you might stick around for a while. We do sometimes get single-shot posters. Pull up a chair and sit down and make your self-comfortable. We're a very friendly bunch.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Thank you. It'll take me a while to find my way around this place - there's so much to choose from! I'm interested in quite a number of the topics on offer - English usage, word origins, language games, verse-writing, grammatical theory - so I'm sure I'll fit in pretty well.
One question: is there any sort of "off-topic" section where members can get to know each other socially?
As usual, Tinman did a fine job of finding a US corrolary, but applying your thinking to us in the USA, the "lottery" aspect is missing from the jingoistic practice of redlining.
Re ZIP codes: Why are we still using the term? It originated way back in the 1960s, IIRC, meaning "Zone Improvement Program." Why don't we just go back to "zone," since nobody remembers how it was when one sent mail to Beverley Hills 10 instead of Beverley Hills 90210.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
I assume that you and the other posters were too polite to point it out!
Ah, well, I missed it anyway, Guy. However, as Bob said, we try to stick to the meaning of the post, realizing that people here know the language, but occasionally a mistake will creep in.
Yes, we'd love to see you on one of our chats. There is a chat function here on Wordcraft, but recently we've been using Google chat because Bob has had trouble accessing the chat here. If you'd like to chat and have a Gmail address, just send me a private message (click Go/Personal Zone/Private Messaging), and let me know what it is. I'll invite you on Saturday (18:00, GMT) then. If you don't have a Gmail address, you will have to get one.
I assume that you and the other posters were too polite to point it out!
Ah, well, I missed it anyway, Guy.
For the record, I wrote "affect" instead of "effect". Very dangerous mistake to make on a forum like this as it suggests I don't know the difference between a noun and a verb!
quote:
However, as Bob said, we try to stick to the meaning of the post, realizing that people here know the language, but occasionally a mistake will creep in.
Thanks. I still need to proof-read better though
quote:
Yes, we'd love to see you on one of our chats. There is a chat function here on Wordcraft, but recently we've been using Google chat because Bob has had trouble accessing the chat here. If you'd like to chat and have a Gmail address, just send me a private message (click Go/Personal Zone/Private Messaging), and let me know what it is. I'll invite you on Saturday (18:00, GMT) then. If you don't have a Gmail address, you will have to get one.
I have a Google account, but not a Gmail address. I'll investigate. Thanks!
