The data show that the opposite is true: Opposition to Medicare for All is primarily driven by public ignorance of what it entails.
The results of the Kaiser Foundations’ survey on M4A provide strong evidence that incremental alternatives to M4A (Medicare expansion, public option) 1.) Have slightly more support (15 percent) 2.) This is due to widespread misunderstandings of what M4A actually is.
Kaiser found that support varies wildly just depending on the description of the exact same program “Single-payer” “Medicare for All” “socialized medicine” “nationalized health care”
Note that for all terms except “single-payer” and “socialized medicine” reactions are positive by a nearly super-majority among Democrats (83–87%) and Independents (57–62%). In total, positive attitudes are exactly the same toward universal health coverage and M4A.
When they use all the terms at once, the support drops from nearly two-thirds to 52 percent, which I’m guessing is your basis for saying that people like it less when they find out “what it entails.” However, when the totality of data is taken together, it’s clear that this is not the case. It’s noteworthy that in 2018, bipartisan public support was close to 59 percent.
When the public describes the aspects of their ideal health care policy, they’re basically describing Medicare for All. The most controversial aspect M4A is “Eliminating private health insurance companies,” which 67 percent of respondents said was either “very important” or “somewhat important.”
Here’s the crucial part: 61 percent believe that they would still have to pay co-pays and deductibles while 44 percent believe they would still have to pay premiums under Medicare for All. So nearly two-thirds of Americans still think they’ll be paying both higher taxes and out-of-pocket costs under M4A.
Bernie has shown himself to be effective at patiently explaining the case for Medicare for All to every American regardless of what their political affiliation is. At a Fox News Town Hall, Brett Baier posed it in the most loaded way possible, i.e. “Bernie wants to raise your taxes to fund government-controlled health care.” Bernie explained that taxes will be raised but the vast majority of people will see a net reduction in their spending by eliminating out-of-pocket costs.
He was loudly applauded at a staged Fox News event.
There is still pretty strong ideological opposition among Republicans to M4A, ACA, public option or any federal intervention in health care, but this is not fixed. GOP policymakers might be intransigent, but the average Republican voter can be won.
What the Kaiser Foundation polling makes clear is that the credibility of the federal government as an agent for delivering health care took a huge hit under Obama due to the failure and inadequacy of the ACA. Nearly three-fourths of Republicans supported a stronger role for the federal government in health care in 2006.
Support for M4A reached a majority in fall 2016, and much of the credit for that outcome has to be given to the Sanders campaign, which put it on the agenda.
And Bernie has a secret weapon that no other candidate has: A large passionate grassroots movement, which will be instrumental in both educating the public and pressuring legislators in their home districts to back M4A. Before the campaign started, my local DSA branch was going door-to-door canvassing for M4A, but those efforts have since been rolled into the Sanders campaign.
When and if Sanders is elected, we will return to that work and we’ll be joined by all those activist groups that Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg so cynically maligned as “Super PACs” and “dark money groups:” the Nurses Unions, teachers unions, Our Revolution, Center for Popular Democracy.
You say Bernie has been ineffective, but he’s the only one with an actual theory of change. The Democratic strategy, which has failed for two decades, involves appeasing an entrenched and hostile Republican Party. It’s believed that if they just craft the perfect compromise, then the obstructionist GOP will say “Gee, that’s so reasonable. I guess we’ll stop filibustering and shutting down the government.”
Joe Biden is the perfect embodiment of this losing mentality. After that farce of an impeachment hearing, the first thing he did was to declare that he hadn’t given up on working with them. This is the guy who’s supposed to fight for us?
If not Bernie, who else? Pete Buttigieg? Who worked as a McKinsey hatchetman for Blue Cross BlueShield? Mike Bloomberg, the Republican billionaire? Elizabeth Warren, who would probably be in first place if she hadn’t waffled on M4A in 2019?
In this thread, I have variously been called both “cynical” and “idealistic.” Which am I? Cynicism is not believing that ordinary people have the power to effect change. Idealism is thinking Republican lawmakers can be won over with reason and some kind of Aaron Sorkin pablum from the “West Wing.”
The only thing that has ever brought real change in America is grassroots democratic organizing from the bottom up. So much landmark legislation was passed under Richard Nixon. Obama referred to him as “more progressive than me in many ways.” Was it because Nixon was a left-wing visionary? Hell no. He was pressured from below by a robust leftwing movement.
Change historically has happened despite who is sitting in the Oval Office. We’ve never had an “organizer in chief” like Bernie Sanders. Imagine if Nixon were working with a mass movement instead of literally having COINTELPRO spy on and murder them.
We might not be able to vote out all the Republicans because of gerrymandering and voter suppression, but we can educate their constituents one at a time, door to door, weekend after weekend, until they put enough pressure on their representatives to move legislation to congress.
Once we get Medicare for All passed, and deliver on policy that provides relief to the vast majority of working people on a life-or-death issue, thus building political capital, we will carry that momentum forward, and do that same thing with climate change, minimum wage, criminal legal reform, immigration and every other issue on our platform.
This is how we win, John. I hope you will join us.
