Fair enough. But, digging a bit into the details, it’s worth noting that your first cite shows that support for single-payer has in fact been the position of the majority of Americans after 2016, even if it was less than 70%. And the second cite shows lack of support specifically for Bernie’s plan to eliminate private insurance altogether – which plan I always thought was unrealistic and politically a non-starter – not lack of support for MfA itself. In fact when they present the option of “Medicare for All who choose it, allowing private insurance”, the overall percentage who approve is … exactly 70%!
So I think your additional data points are a useful clarification but the fact remains that MfA appears to be a popular policy proposal.
There are so many flavors floating around, and the details are so critical to the execution, I’d say relatively few data points on a complex topic are not good fodder to base conclusions on. But I do agree that MfA is very popular policy proposal.
It’s extremely easy to reconcile. First, when people are told that private insurance would be abolished under a Sanders plan, their support plummets for M4A. Second, it’s the typical micro vs macro conundrum. I know if my own car is a good car. But don’t ask me to evaluate the automobile industry in total. I know if my house is a good investment, but I can’t accurately appraise the entire housing market across the US.
Same thing with health care and insurance. People generally are OK with what they have in the US, although yes, it is too expensive. But people generally think their own situation is good. Most of these people know alot more about their own doctors and hospitals and Rx than they know about the overall health care system.
This analogy appears to be based on an implicit assumption that few or no Americans can or will ever learn something about a topic (in this case UHC and single-payer) that would affect their votes.
I’m not sure that’s a safe assumption.
Yes, this. Only some fraction of voters will pay attention to such information, but we can’t assume that none will, nor can we assume that over time the numbers paying attention can’t increase.
Thus the discussion isn’t actually based on prescriptive ideas on what American voters “should” know or believe. Instead, it’s based on the twin facts that useful information is worth presenting, and that polling provides evidence that opinions do change over time.
It’s fine if you want to try to educate the electorate. But that is not a short term project to accomplish during one election cycle. Warren and Sanders are way out over their skis.
Right. People don’t approve of Congress, but they like their representative. They think “the schools” are bad, but they like their child’s school. So propose to reform other people’s health coverage, but not to replace theirs with something totally new.
But Bernie’s bill (which Warren backs to the hilt) is what is actually called MFA, inaccurate though that may be descriptively. If you add “…who
want it”, I have no problem with that. It’s what other Democrats are proposing and what I support. If anyone thinks I oppose that, we have failed to communicate.
But Warren and Sanders are two of the top three in polls, and they support precisely what you are correctly calling “unrealistic and politically a non-starter”.
The point of this thread is to oppose those two top tier candidates. Just those two. Bernie and Liz. That’s it. Not to oppose UHC in general terms, or to oppose any of the other candidates’ plans. I thought I was clear about that from the jump, but if not, my apologies.
The question of what Americans want and will want to vote for, the question of political advantage and disadvantage, is just a question very independent of arguments regarding what voters SHOULD be in support of.
Is “useful” (YMMV) information worth presenting? Sure. But “useful” information that is not useful to the question being asked is pretty useless. It is useful to a different question.