I watched the debate between Bernie and Ted Cruz over healthcare, and the thing that struck me was that even though this delved far more into some policy ideas compared to what we saw in the general campaign, it often seemed to involve people talking past each other and not getting through.
Worse, check out the comments, they are mixed, with competing points of view, but radically different narratives about which ideas are more sound.
Part of the problem I detected was that there were often appeals that only had partial appeal to the population. When Cruz was railing on about how government healthcare just makes things worse, it was music to the ears of conservatives because of their dogma about anything touched by government turning to ash. Cruz often made appeals to free markets and increased choice with regard to healthcare. How obamacare lead to rationing, as if conservative were concerned about rationing.
The truth is, as was VERY briefly touched on by Bernie, healthcare in the US is rationed too, just more based on ability to pay rather than anything else. But this idea was too unexplored. The logical conclusion of conservative thought must be that rationing is not a bad thing, just bad if the GOVERNMENT is tangentially involved. Economic rationing of the care that leads to life or death is TOTALLY valid and just. This needed to be highlighted more to force conservatives to confront the implications of their world view. But this debate did not lead to that. I wonder if this is better done one on one, or perhaps still with a debate but with someone more intimately acquainted with conservative objections to universal healthcare, and their psychological underpinnings and implications.
This made me lose a little faith in debates though, it seems like very few minds were changed, and the dogma still stands un…pierced.
More choice = superior
government involvement in healthcare = worse outcomes
universal healthcare = ultra long wait times
etc etc, there are so many more, but until we find a way to unwarp reality inside the conservative mind, I fear we are lost.
You have to give Bernie Sanders credit. At least he stuck to his principals, such as they are.
When the hair salon owner told him that she couldn’t expand her business and hire more people, because if she went over 50 employees, she would have to provide health care and she couldn’t afford to do that, Sanders said “sorry, you shouldn’t be allowed to expand”. Because it is apparently better to have no job and no health care than a job and no health care.
I think he stuck to his principles, but that’s not exactly what he said. I think a fair reading of what he said is “if you have a business of 50 employees or more, you should be required to provide them with health insurance”. I think an even better answer is “we should have a universal health care system, such that no employer is required to provide their employees with health insurance”.
Debates in a polarized political environment are about presenting ones arguments to people inclined to agree with them, not to convince the opposition to change their minds. This is not a fault of debates, it’s the predictable outcome of electing ideologues instead of thinking people.
I don’t think it’s the same thing. He said she should be required to offer health insurance if she expands past 50. Unless I missed it, he didn’t say “you shouldn’t be able to expand” or “or else you can’t expand” – he said “if you expand, you should be required to do this”.
Those aren’t the same thing. There is a difference between saying “you can’t do this” and “you should be required to do X if you want to do this”.
Society makes those sort of judgments all the time. One day short of your 21st birthday? No booze for you.
One day after your 18th birthday and you want to cancel a contract? Too bad.
You make $100 more than the threshold for some poverty assistance program? Outta luck, pal.
The drawing of lines is always somewhat arbitrary – there’s no compelling reason why the age of majority should be 18 rather than 19 or 17 or 17 and three quarters. But ultimately lines have to be drawn somewhere.
As has been said before, if you don’t think a line should be drawn for the size of company that must offer insurance, then it would seem logical that a national health insurance program would solve the issue entirely.
If you want to expand you have to do X or you can’t expand. You can’t do X. Therefore you can’t expand.
It’s not the arbitrariness of the line. I was a little surprised that Sanders didn’t respond that he would, if elected, implement taxpayer-funded health care for all and therefore the hair salon owner would be paying for her employees’ health care no matter whether she expanded or not.
Of course, the counter argument would be “I can’t afford to pay for health care for my current employees - you want to raise my taxes so I have to. How am I going to afford that?” But that is a more general objection to Sanders’ spending plans, which suffered IIRC somewhere around $10T in shortfall and cost six million jobs.
Maybe Sanders would stick to his principles then too, and say “maybe unemployment would go up and the national debt doubled again, but it’s better that you are unemployed and your children crippled with debt - at least you have health care”.
That’s not the two things – the difference is between me saying “I can’t lose 20 pounds” and whether or not I can actually lose 20 pounds.
Me: I can’t lose 20 lbs – how am I supposed to get a date with a smokin’ hot lady?
Bernie: I hate to tell you this, but I think if you want a date with a smokin’ hot lady, you should have to lose 20 lbs.
That’s very different than Bernie telling me that I can’t have a date with a smokin’ hot lady.
So…back to the OP, some debates can definitely change some people’s minds. Debates here on this forum have changed my mind on various gun issues, for example. I’m pretty sure than a few posters have had their minds changed on gay marriage because of debates here.
Presidential debates definitely move polls, at least in the short term, so there was a temporary change of minds at least.
Society is not making this decision, the government is. The question is whether the government is making a rational decision. In the case of the hair salon owner, she wants to expand and hire more people. The government is telling her that she can not because she can not afford to offer them health insurance coverage. Thus the government is making the judgement that the prospective employees are better off with no job than with a job with no health insurance attached.
I can think of alternatives to both the current system and national health insurance.
Me: I want to get in this club.
Bernie: You have to have a membership card to get inside.
Me: I don’t have the membership card and have no way to get it.
Bernie: I hate to tell you but you have to have a membership card to get inside.
In a way, but my metaphor is much closer, since it’s not binary whether I can lose the 20 lbs, or whether the hairdresser can offer health insurance, unlike having a membership card. In my metaphor, in which my statement can’t be accurately assessed based on my asserting it alone (just like the assertion of the hairdresser), Bernie is just telling me what he thinks the requirements should be, and not saying that I cannot achieve what I want to achieve.
If the hairdresser had offered incontrovertible proof, accepted by Bernie, that she could not offer health insurance to her employees, then I would agree with you.
What is the difference between “I can’t lose 20 lbs.” and not being able to lose 20 lbs.?
Bernie did accept her at her word.
She said she couldn’t expand because she couldn’t afford health care. Bernie said, tough - if you can’t afford health care, you shouldn’t be able to expand. Because it is his belief that, overall, it is better to have unemployed people with no health care than employed people with no health care. Because he said the salon owner should not be able to expand if she can’t afford health care for her employees.
One is asserting something is so, and the other is that something actually being so.
Nowhere in the clip or the quotes I read did I see this occur (though he didn’t challenge her on her word either).
Bernie didn’t say “tough”… he said “I think you should be required to do this if you expand past 50”. As for your assertion that his belief is “it is better to have unemployed people with no health care than employed people with no health care”, that’s your assertion, not his words. I don’t think he believes this.
I’ve not seen the debate, but I don’t know if your third sentence follows from the rest of what you’re saying.
The nature of laws and regulations is that you have to draw the line somewhere. If you want businesses bigger than a certain size to provide healthcare, then you’re going to have to define it. For businesses which are close to the cutoff point, (whatever it is) it might be a big factor in their being able to expand.
But that doesn’t mean that them not being able to expand is desirable in and of itself. That just means that it’s a price worth paying in order to have a mandate that “big” businesses provide health care.