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Every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, has released a list of banished words—terms in the English language that deserve never to be spoken again. The university’s 2016 list includes “stakeholder.\" The term “stakeholder” should be relegated to the same linguistic storage facility as “trepanation” and “orgone generator.” To start, “stakeholder” has a mercenary connotation. The original meaning of the term is a person who literally held the money of bettors while the game was on. This meaning evolved into a second definition: “a person, company, etc., with a concern or (esp. financial) interest in ensuring the success of an organization, business, system, etc.”Such a word origin is especially curious when it comes to health policy because stakeholders, in fact, frequently do have financial interests in the issue at hand. Depending on the matter, “key stakeholders” may include hospitals, physician practices, pharmaceutical companies, long-term care facilities, managed care organizations, insurers, and health IT companies.It is, of course, essential to listen to the perspectives of those whose bottom line is affected by regulation and policy, but a catchall phrase like “stakeholder” obscures the landscape in question, much like a dense fog.