Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Yesterday was kind of a tough day on a few fronts, even for a Monday. So, this morning I was scanning the various news apps I have, searching the headlines for something substantive, but also, and more importantly, for a laugh. Leave it to Mother Jones to provide the latter, while attempting to be the former.
The crew over there has apparently decided Mother Jones will be the publication to comprehensively cover even the death-rattle of Bernie Sanders’ campaign while pretending said campaign has any purpose, let alone merit. It was in that vein that the magazine released an op-ed online that actually sought to throw a little cold water on Harold Pollack’s (University of Chicago Professor, author and medical policy blogger) recent pronouncement about Sanders and the relevance of his campaign. To wit, Pollack said Sanders had started a political revolution.
“…enough to put the dream of single-payer health care back on the national political agenda in a way few would have expected five years ago…” MJ quoted Pollack as saying.
Pollack went on to cite a fresh Gallup poll that indicated “58% of U.S. adults favor the idea of replacing the Affordable Care Act with a federally funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans.” Well, sure, when you say it like that. I mean, who is this Federal fellah, and why is he so generous at to want fund a healthcare system that provides insurance for us all? I’m quite certain at least 30% of those 58% in favor have no idea that the federal government itself has no money, so “federally funded” means “taxpayer funded.”
Why 30 percent? Because, among the things we’ve learned from this election cycle is that about 30% of Americans can be counted upon to not know anything useful at any given time, as borne out by the poll that found 30 percent republican support for bombing Agrabah, the fictional city that served as the setting for Disney’s Aladdin series of animated films.
The Mother Jones piece goes on to cast doubt on the veracity of the 58% number.
“Americans have a long history of supporting things in the abstract but not so much when they become concrete partisan proposals,” the author of the MJ piece laments, going on to cite contradictory polling data: a 2013 poll that showed 37 percent of Americans held unfavorable attitudes toward the “Affordable Care Act” but 46 percent had negative impressions of “Obamacare,” etc.
Yes, Americans are sensitive to branding, that’s why so many people make so much money trying to figure out how best to “brand” something to be sold to consumers. Branding is why people will put a monochromatic picture of a partially-eaten piece of fruit on their car. Naturally, the government is terrible at “branding” because it doesn’t have to be good at it. Compulsory participation in whatever scheme they’ve cooked up makes coming up with a good name for it unnecessary. Hell, on that note, if the GOP can’t get rid of Obamacare, they should at least give it an intellectually honest moniker, like, “The Subsidize the Unproductive While Having Terrible Insurance Not Many Providers Want to Take Act.”
The MJ piece goes on to cite a few more of these seemingly contradictory poll results, lamenting all the while that more Americans can’t get solidly behind socialized medicine, whatever it’s called. Then, the author answers his own question as to why.
“Gallup’s poll last week didn’t so much as breathe the word ‘taxes,’ and if it did support for the universal health care option would sink like a stone.”
Well, no kidding.
Americans like the way a lot of things sound in the abstract, but balk when they discover all the devils lurking in the various details. In the abstract, replacing my front brake pads and rotors seems like a simple, half-hour job. In reality it’s a nightmare of grease, rounded nuts and swearing that goes on for most of the afternoon. In the abstract, being able to legitimately put a “26.2” sticker on the back of the stupid coupe seems like it would be awesome. In reality, the training and discipline to run that far – at least, all in the same day at one go – isn’t something I or my trick knee are likely to enjoy (it only knows one trick. It will randomly make me see a flash of light and then when I open my eyes I’m on the ground in pain. Not much a trick really, if I’m honest.). In the abstract, replacing Obummercare with something that isn’t awful sounds like a great idea; but sadly, all the ideas so far proposed are to replace it with a different flavor of government boondoggle, new and improved with even more government. Americans are mercifully skeptical, apparently, of such proposals.
Of course, whereas the author of the MJ piece found cause to lament in his conclusion, I find the opposite. It’s reassuring to know the majority of Americans, while amenable to huge and fantastical ideas in theory, at least know how to reject a mountebank when they see one. Well, most of us Gen-X and older Americans can anyway. The millennials seem more apt to create a cult of personality around said mountebank, as long as he promises enough free stuff while excoriating those evil corporations. And stuff. Because greed.
If anything, the contradictory poll results show the effectiveness of branding and the shallowness of American comprehension of important things going on around them that TMZ doesn’t cover.
“As for universal health care, a Harris poll last September found 63 percent approval. A Kaiser poll in December found 58 percent support for Medicare-for-all.” Wrote the author of the MJ piece.
Again, branding. “Universal Healthcare” sounds lovely to the average person, I’m sure. The average person, however, in America is familiar with Medicare, and knows it’s not a wonderful thing. As if to further make this point, the very next sentence of the MJ piece reads: “Gallup polls going back 15 years show higher support for government guarantees of health care during the Bush years than they do now.”
Really? Well, what’s changed? Oh, yeah, today we’ve got several years of familiarity with “government guarantees of health care” under our belts whereas such was merely an abstract, fantastical concept during the Bush regime.
If somehow Trump wins the general election and becomes President, maybe he should break just one more campaign promise and leave Obamacare alone; not replace it or even rename it something truthful. Already, the cracks are forming. Insurance companies are pulling out of the program while consumers find Obama’s promises of lower premiums and being able to keep their doctors ringing increasingly hollow. Let it get worse. Let it limp on a few more years and then collapse under its own weight. Let’s make it so Obama’s legacy is that he is the President who finally taught Americans that socialism doesn’t work. At all. Ever. And let’s let the catastrophic implosion of the idiotic program that bears his name stand testament to that fact for generations to come, so that future Americans won’t repeat this mistake.
Damn. Now I’m sounding idiotically idealistic and unrealistic. I really gotta limit my Mother Jones consumption.
Leave a Reply