New York Times contributing op-ed writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote an incredulous article titled "
Has Obamacare Turned Voters Against Sharing the Wealth?" that is worth reading. After reading one should understand the cyclicality of right-wing misinformation. Edsall starts with a bold statement:
With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, the share of Americans convinced that health care is a right shrank from a majority to a minority.
This shift in public opinion is a major victory for the Republican Party. It is part of a larger trend: a steady decline in support for redistributive government policies.
Edsall bases that statement on a couple of studies, specifically "
How Elastic Are Preference For Redistribution? Evidence From Randomized Survey Experiments." The paper is well-written and even provides
the test that participants took. The conclusion from the experiment:
The General Social Survey shows there has been a slight decrease in stated support for redistribution in the US since the 1970s, even among those who self-identify as having below-average income ....
Standard models predict that support for redistribution should increase with income inequality, yet there has been little evidence of greater demand for redistribution over the past thirty years in the US|despite historic increases in income concentration.
This is a far cry from Edsall's assertion that some sort of victory was won by conservative ideology. It is much deeper than a win or lose for any party—Republican, Democrat, or otherwise—or for any ideology. It is really about a misinformed populace.
Follow below the fold for more.
Edsall points out that in 2006 Americans believed that health care should be a government protected right by a 69-28 percent margin and now they do not by a 45-52 percent margin. He points out that the decline in said belief occurred when then-Sen. Obama started campaigning on the issue. What he failed to mention is that as health care again became part of the debate, forces against any type of universal health care started the misinformation campaign that continuously misled Americans.
Edsall acknowledges that millions would lose their insurance if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the Affordable Care Act in the King v. Burwell case. He gives the impression that Republicans are working on a viable alternative, but the reality is that there is not a viable alternative. Only single payer or Medicare for All would save more than the Affordable Care Act, as it insured us all.
Edsall points out that Americans polled want all the great things in Obamacare. They want insurance companies to accept pre-existing conditions. They want children up to the age of 26 to be able to remain on parents' insurance policies. They want companies with over 100 employees to be forced to provide health care coverage. The only unfavorable option of consequence from the poll was the individual mandate. Moreover, the poll did an experiment to determine if well-informed people would change their opinions. When informed, even the individual mandate received more than 50 percent support.
Bad compromises were made when designing the Affordable Care Act, but even with these bad compromises the Affordable Care Act is coming in at a much lower cost than expected, $142 billion dollars lower, 11 percent lower. The uninsured rate fell by about 33 percent and 16.4 million more Americans have been able to get health insurance. Most Americans do not know the successes. Most Americans do not know that Obamacare has actually increased employment and decreased the budget.
Edsall points out that Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said any Republican alternative would "tend to be quite a bit less generous" than under Obamacare, and that "low-income people, in particular, were likely to end up with very skimpy insurance" and fewer low-income people would be covered under the program. When that occurs, everybody's insurance will increase because the cost of the system—including increased use of emergency rooms—will be paid by the fewer people insured. Republican attempts to pay less will cost much more. And their misled constituents will balk.
Edsall tries to morph the perception that health care as a right is no longer accepted by a majority of Americans into an American shift to conservatism. He does this for a reason: he wants to stymie any conversation on topics that would offend the continued growth of the plutocracy. He wants Democrats to fear talking against the Trans Pacific Partnership, carried interest, higher taxes on the wealthy, and other policies that would redistribute ill-gained wealth and income back into society at large.
The American plutocracy has been aware for decades that a well-informed population is a danger to those who continue to extract undeserved wealth from society. They engaged the church to mislead the population at large. Kevin Kruse details this in his book, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. The Powell Memo, drafted by Lewis Powell, detailed what amounts to a misinformation campaign that would have to be run throughout society. Schools, universities, and the media had to be engaged to misinform. Institutes with official sounding names (e.g., Heritage Foundation) had to be formed to give fallacies unwarranted credibility.
With all the billions being thrown to misinform Americans, is it any wonder that most are misinformed? Is it any wonder that most think the American dysfunctional medical system is better than systems like those from Canada, New Zealand, France, Germany, Taiwan, or other industrialized nations with much less cost and much better outcomes?
Americans are not getting more conservative. Americans are scared. They are told that taxing the wealthy hurts the economy. They are told that increasing the minimum wage hurts the economy. They are told that Obamacare causes loss of jobs. They are told that regulations hurt us all. They are told that the wealthy are deserving of wealth, and that if they just work hard enough, they can get there. These are all lies.
Unless the lies that are slowly metastasizing in the American psyche are refuted vociferously with the same passion of the liars, Americans will remain confused, not conservative. Their minds will remain enslaved to a plutocracy tightening the chains.